Film: 'Shivamani'; Producer: Jagannath Pai; Story-Screenplay-Dialogues-Direction: Amaranath; Camera: Sree Venkat; Music: Veera Samarth; Starring: Sree Murali, Sharmila Mandre, Avinash, Shobharaj, Vinaya Prakash, Kote Prabhakar; Rating *

'Shivamani' has been designed as a masala entertainer to cater to the tastes of the mass audience. Debutant director Amarnath has filled this film with loads of commercial ingredients to make it appealing to what the film trade often describe as B and C centres. However Amarnath is unable to create a right tone for making an enjoyable commercial entertainer mainly because he has utterly failed in his responsibilities as writer and director.

'Shivamani' goes haywire from the word go. The producers of the film have made huge investments to make this film, and each sequence comes out with rich production values.

But what is the use of spending money recklessly on production values when the story and screenplay is so weak. With in a few sequences of the film, it becomes clear that Amarnath is thoroughly incompetent to handle a film to be made in a big span. The film does not have a good beginning, its interval point is shoddy and even the climax sequence looks very pale.

The support of his technical crew notwithstanding, Amarnath has not cared to put his house in order. To begin with the story written by him lacks freshness and is totally illogical. And he has followed a pattern of narration that is more than four decades old.

The villains in the film look crude and scream all the times. Rather than tickling funny bones, the comedy sequences involving villains is quite irritating and showcases the poor taste of the director.

The director has tried to stretch the sentimental factor in the second half, but it fails to make any impact with the audience.

Shivamani shows his violent streaks whenever he comes across harassment of innocent people and exploitation of women. He is in love with his college friend Shruthi who likes Shivamani's daring acts in helping poor and defenceless people. Shivamani takes on rowdy elements in his college which angers the city's don Naga.

Then Shivamani comes to know that he is an orphan and brought up by a good Samaritan. He comes across a couple who is in search of their long lost son. Shivamni finds his parents and later he also vanquishes the villains.

Such stories have been seen in thousands of films, but Amarnath could have been little innovative in his presentation. But he is totally ill equipped to do a fair job despite Sree Venkat's attractive photography and debutant Veer Samarth's good song compositions.

It is better not to watch a film like 'Shivamani'.