Arjun reddy was flawed but a detailed character study film. I felt that bala tried something contrasting and unconventional from the original which didn't go well with the producer to scrap the whole film. But, I had hopes with the bala cut, as the subject of arjun reddy is his forte since he had made previously sethu out of it.
Dhruv vikram performed sincerely whatever he was told to do. Eshwari rao's character adds freshness to this remake. And those who were bothered about arjun reddy's length will get some relief in watching this as its only 110 minutes. That's the only positives.
Watching varma is like watching arjun reddy in a capsule form. The runtime is brutally chopped which doesn't give any scenes depth or detailing and the emotions. The lead pair don't have any chemistry at all. The heroine's performance is very poor. Arjun reddy had so many memorable supporting characters especially the friend and grandma character. But in varma, there is not any good supporting character with the grandma character being removed and friend character turned into a passive one. Not only the director, but the actors were also in hurry to finish the film as all of their dialogue delivery were spoken fast. Action scenes in arjun reddy were realistic but varma's action scenes were like any typical commercial film. Worst scene in the film is the holi revenge sequence where in the original, the hero after beating the guy cries and begs to him not to tease her again. And in this we see the threatening the guy with attitude to not trouble her anymore. The redemption of the lead character through the death of an important character (grandma) doesn't make any impact in varma because the death of the character(father) here was nothing special here and they didn't have any bonding shown. And the climax, I felt illogical, because there was a time jump after varma and megha leave college and later its not shown whether they meet after that or not. In original, it was shown that arjun and preethi had sex before getting seperated.
On the whole, bala either fails or doesn't bother to understand arjun reddy and remaked it without any care. It was wise from the producer to scrap it, otherwise it would have gone down as the worst remake in tamil.
