Yuvakudu (2000)

Here's the back cover's take on this story, (spelling and grammatical errors preserved):

Siva (Sumanth) life long ambition had always been to join the Indian army. His father having died on the battle field serves to make his intention only stronger. However his attempts at getting into the army are not proving successful. When he meets sindhu (Bhoomika) and falls in love with her, he loses her by not declaring his love she treats him as she might any other friend. And when sindhu meets Padmavathi (Jaya Sudha) and agrees to marry her son, all hope for siva seems to be at an end. Will he ever realize any of his dreams?

Here's my take:

Padmavathi is a widowed mother who loves her son very much and is willing to do just about anything to make him happy. Her son, Shiva, is a spoiled, hot-tempered jerk who cares for nobody's feelings but his own. He falls for the beauty and compassionate heart of the neglected and love-starved Sindhu, but instead of trying to get to know her better or to win her favor, he arrogantly demands her hand in marriage. After she refuses to say yes immediately, he's barely civil to her, although he still likes her.* Padmavathi befriends Sindhu for the sake of her son's love, and Sindhu becomes attached enough to her to do anything for her. So Shiva lives happily ever after, sort of.

*I think his nastiness is supposed to show that he a tender heart that he's protecting with his arrogance. What he really has is a preoccupation with his own wants and a total lack of interest in what anyone else is thinking or feeling.

Why don't they hire me to write the back covers of these things?

Godavari (2006)

Anand wasn't exactly my cup of tea, (or coffee), and if I'd realized that this movie was by the same director I probably would have been less excited to watch it. Still, as it turned out, I rather enjoyed it. I also hadn't realized that this was the movie with the fabled animated talking dog, which I thought was rather pointless but wasn't bothered by.

My only beef with this movie was that although Sriram's self-absorbed cousin, Raji, isn't the most amazing person in the world, I didn't think she came close to deserving her fiance Ravi, who really is totally contemptible. I kept thinking, "Get out while you still can, girl!" So [*Spoiler!*] when she told Sriram that she wanted to elope with him, I thought that although that would of course be very sad for Seetha at first (who had a big crush on Sriram), in the end it would avoid much bigger heartaches. And I believe in maximizing total happiness. So I had mixed feelings about that not working out.

Still, on the whole, I thought it was a cute little romance. The pacing was slow, but it didn't drag too much. The characters were fun, and the ending was reasonably good.