Nandamuri Balakrishna starrer films Bangaru Bullodu and Nippuravva were released on the same day twenty years ago. While Bangaru Bullodu had Balakrishna in completely commercial Hero attire hailing from village, Nippuravva had him in a serious role where he works in the Coal Mines Department. It was indeed challenging for Balakrishna to work on two contrasting films at the same time and they getting released on the same day!
Bangaru Bullodu had two heroines Ramya Krishna and Raveena Tandon opposite Balakrishna and the songs by Raj-Koti were quite popular. While Ramya Krishna played the role of “Maradalu” to Balarkishna in rural attire, Raveena Tandon played the city bred girl role. The film instantly got a Hit talk and acting stalwarts like Rao Gopala Rao, Annapurna, Srividya and comedians like Brahmanandam and Babu Mohan made it a commercially successful film. This was supposedly Raveena Tandon’s first and last Telugu film appearance. Ravi Raja Pinisetty directed the film under the banner of Jagapathi Art Pictures.
Nippu Ravva was directed by commercial director Kodanda Rami Reddy and produced by Yuvaratna Arts Production House. The film had Vijayashanthi in the female lead role and many popular actors such as Amrish Puri, and Nizhalgal Ravi. It is one of those films where Balakrishna was portrayed in a reserved role and speak more with actions and body language than dialogues. The underground mine accident rescuing scene is best remembered from this film. Interestingly, the soundtrack for the movie was composed by multiple music directors such as Bappi Lahari and Koti, while the background score was given by “Mozart of Madras” A.R.Rahman. The backgroundscore of this film is much spoken about for the elevation it gave for many crucial scenes in the film.
Nippu Ravva was intially high on openings but slowly subdued and Bangaru Bullodu emerged as the final winner. Interestingly, both the films ran in theatres successfully for a period of over 100 days. This day marks the 20th anniversary of these two contrasting films in Balakrishna’s career.
Some interesting facts about these two films:
Bangaru Bullodu was Raveena Tandon’s only appearance in Tollywood till now. However, she is expected to be seen in an upcoming Telugu Film by Mohan Babu in his own production house Manchu Entertainment.
Nippuravva was a joint production venture by Balakrishna and Vijayashanthi. Due to some differences during the filming between both of them, Balakrishna started losing interest in the production department of the film. Even when these two films were released, Balakrishna was more interested in Bangaru Bullodu promotion, while the fans were hopeful about Nippuravva.
Nippravva was dubbed in Tamil and gained good talk in theatres those days.
In Nippuravva, Balakrishna had to act in a sequence where his character does hunger strike for the song ‘Randi Kadali Randi’. Balakrishna wanted the tired look and for it he really observed fast for 5-6 days during the filming.