Super Star (2002 film)

Super Star is a 2002 Kannada film written by Upendra and directed by Nagathihalli Chandrashekhar, starring Upendra and Keerthi Reddy. Though initially it was started as a remake of the Hindi film Agnisakshi, the story was modified after the Nepalese royal massacre involving King Dipendra. The movie is noted for having four climaxes which the audience could select according to their mindset. All these climaxes were based on the thought process of the character Sigaev found in Anton Chekhov's 1887 short story An Avenger. As of 2021, this was Keerthi Reddy's only Kannada film. Nagathihalli Chandrashekhar had mentioned in an interview that, although he was credited as the director, he was not given much freedom on the sets and Upendra was the one who took decisions regarding the shoot of the movie. It was dubbed into Telugu as Stupid, which was a lot more successful than the Kannada version.

Plot
Devayani is told by a priest that her marrying is like she being hanged to death. Devayani is enraged listening  to this. On the same day, she is returning home from a library, collides against Ricky's car. He falls in love with her, expresses it to her but she rejects. His other attempts to impress her fail too. On the insistence of her cousin, Devayani decides to apologize to Ricky for her harsh behavior.

One day Devayani gets an offer to go to Thailand from her cousin. She decides to go there as she was feeling low recently. She is abandoned by her local  guide Richard in Thailand. Ricky surprises Devayani by being right behind her at that moment. It is understood that she is elated to see him there and that she actually loves him. In the hotel where both of them stayed, an injured Deependra, a prince who recognize Devayani as his lover comes, hugs her and expresses his feelings. Devayani is frightened by his behavior. Soon Deependra is hospitalized. Devayani and Ricky return to India.

Deependra comes to India in search of Devayani. He tells Ricky that Devayani is indeed his girlfriend and that he had killed his entire family. He killed them because they had lied to him that if Devayani and Deependra were to marry, his parents would die as per the astrological predictions. Ricky gets to know that it was only Deependra who loved Devayani and not vice versa. Devayani was too scared to tell this to Deependra as he was a prince. Also Deependra never really asked Devayani if she loved him, but just loved her madly. So Ricky decides to make Deependra understand that it was he who loved Devayani from his side whereas Devayani never liked him. Ricky fails in all his attempts.

In the last attempt,  Ricky advises Devayani to follow her heart. On a rainy night, on one side is Ricky playing his instruments, while on the other side is Deependra plucking his  his eyes off, cutting his ears and limbs dedicating to Devayani. Devayani has an emotional turmoil and runs to Deependra, but the latter dies.

Next morning Ricky takes Devayani on a jeep where it is revealed that Ricky with her now is Deependra and the one who died the previous night was actually Ricky. Devayani is horrified to know this and tells that even if her eyes deceived her, her heart still chose Ricky as she loved Ricky. She runs away to commit suicide by jumping into a waterfalls. She is saved by Deependra. Devayani throws him off into the water only for Ricky to come there. Deependra manages to climb up and come in front of them.

The climax scene has four different endings. It is the four different endings Deependra tries to give to his and Devayani's story. The first one is where Deependra thinks of shooting Ricky so that Devayani too can experience the sufferings of an unfulfilled love like he did. But he remembers Ricky's kind nature, how he tried to unite him and Devayani. He drops off his plan to kill Ricky.

Then he thinks of killing Devayani as she did not understand his love for her. But he realizes that he has killed his entire family for his love and decides not kill her too. He decides to kill himself as he believes he wasn't worthy enough to be loved. Again, he thinks that he must not commit suicide like a coward. He thinks that he must not give up his life for a girl and being a prince of a nation, he must serve his subjects, give back their love instead.

Cast

 * Upendra as Dipendra of Nepal / Rock Star Ricky
 * Keerthi Reddy as Devyani Rana
 * V. Manohar as psychyatrist
 * Nagathihalli Chandrashekhar in a guest appearance
 * Karthik Sharma

Soundtrack
The music for the movie was composed and lyrics were penned by Hamsalekha. The track "Thagole Thagole" was a chartbuster.

Critical reception
The reaction from the critics turned out to be mostly negative upon the film's release. While the performances of the lead artistes, unique story line of the film, soundtrack, background music and other technical aspects of the film were praised, the screenplay of the film was the most criticized by the critics as well as the audiences.

Karnataka
Superstar had an extremely strong opening at the box office across Karnataka similar to the earlier record breaking openers of Upendra and set the box office on fire during its opening weekend. The film continued to storm the box office during its initial weeks, but failed to live up to the expectations and most of the fans were disappointed by the movie. Superstar ended up becoming a below average grosser in Karnataka by running only for 6 weeks in its main centre in Bangalore. The film was sold to distributors at a very high distribution price and got an extraordinary opening in its initial weeks, thus returning investment for the producer. Compared to Upendra's earlier blockbuster movies like A, Upendra, Preethse, H2O, this film was considered as average hit as it returned investment for the producer.

Andhra Pradesh
The Telugu dubbed version of Superstar which was released in Andhra Pradesh in 2003 (a year after its original Kannada release) was titled as Stupid - O Pichi Vadi Prema Katha and had a good opening across Andhra Pradesh, owing mainly to Upendra's Telugu fan following which he had gained due to the large success of the Telugu versions of his earlier blockbuster movies like A and Upendra, and a few straight Telugu movies like Raa and Kanyadanam which were box office hits. Although Superstar was just an average grosser in Karnataka, Stupid surprisingly turned out to be a hit in Andhra Pradesh by completing 100 days of run and its distributors in Andhra Pradesh earned fair profits from the movie.