Super Star (2002 film)


Super Star is a 2002 Kannada film written by Upendra and directed by Nagathihalli Chandrashekhar, starring Upendra and Keerthi Reddy. The story line was loosely based on the Nepalese royal massacre involving Dipendra of Nepal, the tragedy that struck the family of the Nepal king. 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 directed most of the movie. The film had four climaxes that viewers could select on their own. It was dubbed into Telugu as Stupid, which was surprisingly a lot more successful than the Kannada version.

Cast

The music for the movie was composed and lyrics were penned by Hamsalekha. The track named Thagole Thagole was a chartbuster.
TitleSingers
Bhakra bhakraHemanth Kumar, Sweta Malviya
Rajkumar RajkumarHariharan
Thagole ThagoleShankar Mahadevan
Antu AntuNanditha, Sonu Nigam
Thumba ThumbaHariharan
ProblemHemanth Kumar
Bittaku BittakuAdnan Sami

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.

Box office

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 version of Superstar which was released in Andhra Pradesh in 2003 was titled as Stupid - O Pichi Vadi Prema Katha and had a fantastic opening across Andhra Pradesh, owing mainly to Upendra's loyal 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 which not only starred him but were also directed by him, 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.