F3 - anthega!

 

F3  - Fun and Frustration

Telugu, 2022

Director - Anil Ravipudi

Stars - Venkatesh, Varun Tej, Tamannah, Mehreen Pirzada, Murli Sharma, Srikanth Iyengar

Mohan's Measure ⭐⭐

It seems it requires very little to make a Telugu movie these days.  In fact, any notion of a plot is now really serving as background to histrionic, violence, eye candy, and a syrupy ending.  That summarizes F3, the pseudo-sequel to the runaway comedy hit, F2.

I call it a pseudo-sequel because while it has all of the same characters with the same idiosyncrasies of the previous film, the new misadventure is a completely different story.  This time Varun and Venkatesh play a pair of sad sacks who are needing fast money to get out of debt, and they take desperate measures to make it.  This leads Varun to the land of "milk and honey", namely Tamannah and Mehreen, whom he thinks are heirs to a fortune.   We soon find out they are heirs to a failing Telugu/Chinese place, and with this the screwball comedy begins.

But the problem is the fun is only in moments, the rest of the movie drags along with little in the way of connection or completeness.  F3 expects the audience to put our mind, and perhaps our good taste, on airplane mode, such that we can spend nearly 3 hours in formulaic sequences from previous movies, chauvinistic item songs, and occasional, albeit only sometimes effective, humor.

The acting is atrocious, the comedy ridiculous, and the homophobic entendre needless.  But such is Tollywood.  "Anthega, anthega."