Good Luck Sakhi

Good Luck Sakhi is a 2022 Telugu sports comedy written and directed by Nagesh Kukunoor, his first Telugu film, starring Keerthy Suresh, Aadhi Pinisetty and Jagapathi Babu. Devi Sri Prasad composed the music, Chirantan Das shot it and A. Sreekar Prasad edited it. After repeated pandemic delays it released in theatres on 28 January 2022 to negative reviews. Our record lists a running time of 118 minutes.

What the story is about

Sakhi is a young woman in a village in Andhra Pradesh whom everyone calls “Bad Luck Sakhi”, convinced that she brings misfortune wherever she goes; the film opens with a marriage proposal that ends with the groom hurt after his horse stumbles. When an army colonel arrives and opens a sharpshooting centre to train villagers for shooting squads, Sakhi is among those picked, along with Soori, a local troublemaker. Her childhood friend Goli Raju, a theatre actor, is by her side as she starts training with an eye on the national championships, carrying the lucky marbles she has always relied on.

Cast

• Keerthy Suresh as Sakhi Pawar
• Aadhi Pinisetty as Goli Raju, Sakhi’s childhood friend
• Jagapathi Babu as the coach
• Ramaprabha as Sakhi’s grandmother
• Rahul Ramakrishna as Soori
• Divya Sripada as Jyothi
• Shweta Verma as Anjali, a champion shooter
• Raghu Babu, Shravya, Venugopal and Gayatri Bhargavi

Making of the film

According to The Hindu, Kukunoor first wrote the script for Hrishikesh Mukherjee fifteen years earlier, and chose Keerthy Suresh after seeing her in Mahanati. The film was announced on 27 April 2019, began shooting in Hyderabad that month, and also filmed in Vikarabad and Pune; Dil Raju joined as presenter in July 2019. Three-quarters of it was done by November 2019, when the title was revealed, and the rest was completed in September 2020 after the pandemic pause. A 3 June 2021 release, with Tamil and Malayalam dubs, was abandoned, followed by a string of November and December 2021 dates.

What critics said

Reviews were largely negative. The Hans India said good performances could not save “dull and predictable proceedings”. The New Indian Express gave it 1.5 out of 5, finding its woman-empowerment message lost in vague narration. Sangeetha Devi Dundoo of The Hindu called the story “simplistic and predictable”, falling well short of another Iqbal. The Times of India’s Neeshita Nyayapati (2.5/5) praised a “terrific opening” built around Devi Sri Prasad’s “Bad Luck Sakhi” number but called the sound design and editing a let-down, and Eenadu liked the performances but missed a strong conflict. We have found no reliably sourced box-office figure.

Where to watch Good Luck Sakhi

Good Luck Sakhi streams on Aha: the platform’s own listing confirms it, and our record has it there from 5 September 2022. Wikipedia says Amazon Prime Video held the first post-theatrical rights, with a premiere on 12 February 2022 in Telugu and dubbed Tamil and Malayalam versions; we have not confirmed a current Prime Video listing.

Sources: the Wikipedia article on Good Luck Sakhi and the reviews and reports it cites, linked above; the Aha listing; our own cast and crew records.