Romanchakam Movie Review

Sandeep Reddy Vanga, through his production house Bhadrakali Pictures, has produced and directed Arjun Reddy & Animal so far and is currently producing and directing Spirit with Prabhas. After producing the first three films in his own direction in his production house, Sandeep Reddy Vanga, produced, Romanchakam, a romantic comedy thriller film, under the direction of Venu Gopal Reddy. Sumanth Prabhas and Ananthika Sanil, played the lead roles in the film, while the ‘Animal’ actor, Upendra Limaye, played a crucial role. After promoting the film aggressively for the last couple of weeks, the makers released the film in theatres today. Did Sandeep Reddy Vanga continue his success streak as a producer with Romanchakam? Did the promising young actors, Sumanth Prabhas and Ananthika Sanilkumar, score a blockbuster? How did, Venu Gopal Reddy, do as a director? Did the film have enough content to click with its target youth audience? Let’s figure it out with a detailed analysis.

What is it about?

Anvesh(Sumanth Prabhas) is a wannabe entrepreneur based out of Hyderabad. Through his startup company, he wants to launch a dating app. Before launching the app, he wants to understand the psyche of women and accordingly develop the features of his app. To study the psyche of women, he creates a profile on an existing dating app and matches with Mythili(Ananthika Sanil Kumar), a girl based out of Chennai. After talking to Anvesh and get close to him for a few days, Mythili, suddenly blocks him on all social media platforms. Why did Mythili blocks and stop talking to Anvesh suddenly? Why did Mythili comes back into Anvesh’s life again after blocking him? What happens when Mythili visits Hyderabad to meet Anvesh? Did Anvesh eventually launch his app?

Performances:

It is the third film of Sumanth Prabhas in a lead role. Just as in his first two films, he did a good job with his effortless performance in Romanchakam as well. He deserves appreciation for the way he generated fun during lengthy dialogue driven sequences, without going overboard. He appeared very confident and self aware of his strengths throughout the film. Ananthika Sanilkumar looked good and did her part well but there’s not much for her to do in a not so well written role.

Narendra Ravi is the show stealer. With his superb comedy timing, he generated a lot of laugh out loud moments. He is a talent to watch out for in future. Upendra Limaye in the role of a COP, generated a few laughs using his peculiar dialogue delivery skills but most of the times, his performance was a bit loud and over the top. The three actors in the friends group apart from Sumanth and Narendra, also did their parts well. The director, K. V. Anudeep, appeared in a cameo role during the climax and helped to generate a few laughs.

Technicalities:

Vasuki Vaibhav’s music sounds refreshing. He came up with couple of instantly likeable melodies, although both the songs appeared out of the place due to the lack of emotional depth in the romantic track. His background score was alright. Cinematography by Pavan Kumar Pappula was colourful and vibrant. His visuals helped to give the film a very pleasant look throughout. Editing by Chanakya Reddy Toorupu and Venu Gopal Reddy, should have been better, particularly during the first hour of the film. Production values by Bhadrakali Pictures, were adequate.

Positives:

1.⁠ ⁠Comedy Blocks
2.⁠ ⁠Chemistry Between Lead Actors
3.⁠ ⁠Narendra’s Comedy Timing

Negatives:

1.⁠ ⁠First Hour
2.⁠ ⁠Inconsistent Writing
3.⁠ ⁠Poor Romantic Track
4.⁠ ⁠Lack of Strong Emotions

Analysis:

Romantic comedy, thriller comedy, and buddy comedy are three different genres in filmmaking. The idea to put these three genres together and come up with a hilarious comedy entertainer indeed sounds very exciting on paper. The debutant director, Venu Gopal Reddy, took a simple storyline and tried to narrate it with comedy, romance and a bit of thrill. However, he succeeded in generating fun through lengthy & extended dialogue-driven comedy blocks but failed to come up with an engaging romantic track and thrilling moments. Just like most of the buddy comedy films, Romanchakam, too has quite a few senseless but hilarious comedy blocks. Almost all of those comedy blocks generated huge laughs, especially the comedy during the pre-interval and climax episodes worked out very well in favour of the film. The current-generation youth audiences are sure to connect with Buddy comedy. But, does the film offer anything else apart from the comedy blocks? The answer is ‘No’.

‘Gokaraju…idhi goke time kaadu’, ‘Nee peru em peramma…naa peru peramma kadu…mythili’, ‘Okka ganta lo em cheyaccho telusa neeku…. Rendu aragantalu cheyachhu mama’ – these are a few comedy lines which the writer and the director used to generate fun. If you think you can laugh at such one-liners, the film offers quite a few of them at regular intervals. It is not an easy job to write and execute lengthy dialogue-driven senseless comedy blocks but the director and the writer, Venu Gopal Reddy, came up with two such blocks and generated hilarious fun. Yes, the situations, the dialogues, and the characters’ behaviour in those episodes appear senseless and yet, they entertain. Sumanth Prabhas and Narendra, with their effortless comedy timing, made the fun portions in the film entertaining. Ee Nagaraniki Emaindi and Jathi Ratnalu, are the two buddy comedy Telugu films in recent times which worked very well. Both the films offered senseless and yet clean comedy. But in, Romanchakam, the comedy is not as clean. More often than not, the director used below-the-belt humour to generate instant laughs.

The biggest drawback of the film is its inconsistency in writing. The writing during the initial hour of the film is poor to say the least. Read the following – ‘A guy travels from Hyderabad to Chennai to surprise his would-be girlfriend on her birthday. Upon reaching, he calls the girl through his smartphone and says he’s in Chennai. And, the girl asks him to prove that he indeed is in Chennai’. What would you do in such a situation? The easiest way is to turn on the camera on the phone and show her the live visuals, isn’t it? But, our guy(the hero) in the film goes to multiple people on the road and requests them to speak to the girl on the phone and confirm his whereabouts to her. Now, read another such instance – ‘the girl(the heroine) mentions a riddle and asks the guy to find the answer to the riddle in twenty-four hours if he wants her phone number’. What would the Gen Z people do if they were put in such a situation? The first thing they do is type out the riddle on ChatGPT or Google to find out the answer, right? But our guy and his friends don’t do so. The first hour of the film has many such poorly written sequences. On one side the director tried to ‘play it cool’ with the romantic track to attract the current-generation youth and on the other side, he tried to give it some depth, by using words like ‘madhuram’, ‘amaram’, and ‘kavyam’. Due to this confusion in writing, the audience failed to connect with the romantic track. The writing for the lead actress’s role does not make any sense at all.

There was an attempt to show her as a strong and independent character who is also dealing with a few vulnerabilities but her disappearing acts in two crucial situations appeared silly. Also, the transaction sequence of the lead actor and his sudden lecture about women and their value, appeared abrupt and very convenient. Also, it is high time for the filmmakers to stop thinking the Gen Z audience will connect instantly if the film has excessive expletives(bhutulu). There’s nothing wrong in using expletives if the situation demands but using them for the sake of generating some cheap humour, underlines the inability of the writer to come up with clean and organic comedy.

Overall, if you are fine to watch random dialogue-driven comedy blocks one after the other, the buddy comedy in Romanchakam has a chance to entertain you to an extent. However, apart from those comedy blocks, the film offers nothing else. Better care in writing the romantic track, especially during the initial hour, could have increased the graph of the film considerably.

Bottom Line – ‘Fun’ Clicked. ‘Romance & Thrill’ Did Not

Rating – 2.5/5