Happy

A. Karunakaran's 2006 Telugu romantic comedy is one of the films that pushed Allu Arjun toward mainstream stardom early in his career. A young man called Bunny crosses paths with Madhumati, whose father blocks her from finishing college and wants her married to a police officer of the same caste for the sake of his own political arithmetic. The obstacle to the romance is not a private jealousy but a machinery of caste and politics, though the film delivers that through comic set pieces built around Brahmanandam rather than through social argument. Genelia D'Souza's energy sets the tempo, and Manoj Bajpayee plays a villain with a hardness not often seen in Telugu cinema of the period. What stands out most now is that the film is slightly more willing than many of its contemporaries to let the woman state what she wants in her own words. The template still holds, though: the hero persists, she resists, she is eventually won over. Whether that reads as romantic fantasy depends entirely on your tolerance for the template. Who it's for: viewers curious about Allu Arjun's rise and comfortable with the rhythm of mid-2000s Telugu romance. Who it's not for: anyone who will find the runtime past two and a half hours, and the comedy tracks that keep interrupting the story, hard going.