Dorai Swamy’s Romeo (2014) Movie Review

Cast: Sairam Shankar, Adonika Rodricks, Raviteja,
Music Director: Sunil Kashyup
Director Gopi Ganesh
Cinematographer: P G Vinda
Censor Certificate: UA
Runtime: 119.50 Minutes
Watched at Prasadz Multiplex, Hyderabad

Samantha (Adonika Rodricks), a travel-buff, a free spirit who lives for the moment and the highs from arriving at new places. This is her life’s philosophy. She meets Kittu (Sairam Shankar) at Rome coliseum. Over the course of their travel, Kittu gets closer to Samantha. But things start falling apart, when Samantha reveals the truth about her boyfriend Rakesh (Subbaraj) in New York and Kittu steals her passport. She tends to return back home, but she need the passport, which she don’t have. Later, Samantha chances upon Kittu and takes his help to fly away from Rome to Verona. Romeo takes a mysterious turn here. Audiences then get captivated with the questions such as – Why she is so inclined towards Kittu? Why did Kittu come to Italy? After some twists and turns in Verona story finally settles down and then there is a happy ending.

Sairam Shankar is good in few scenes but overall he disappoints. Its gets monotonic to sit through a movie which has Sairam in almost every frame either stalking, dancing or quite simply hamming his way through out the film post Bumper Offer. Adonika Rodricks although hotter than her previous movie, needs to shed those extra pounds quickly. Quite frankly, the actress in the first half looks a few years younger to Adonika in the second half. Talking of Raviteja, he is good in a 5 minute special character. Subbaraju is limited in his role. Nagababu, Jayasudha, Pragathi and Ali have nothing much to do.

While you step into theatre, your expectations are high. Obviously, thanks to the extremely talented Puri Jagannadh for Story and Dialogues. But what you witness as the reel unfolds is a J grade movie which is simply terrible to bear. Director Gopi Ganesh’s execution has failed bigtime. The background score is loud and irritating at times. The screenplay is far from gripping and the dialogues are bad at most of the times. The runtime is 1 hour 59 minutes but it actually seems like a boring 180 minutes movie. Yes, it’s that horrible.

The movie starts off slow; with the first half of the movie and the beginning of the second half are dingy. The movie doesn’t seem to have the air of comedy and romance which is the life and soul of the movie. The romance between Sairam Shankar and Adonika is muffled. Emotional scenes look unrealistic and forced. They fail to evoke any feeling. The last 15 minutes leading to the climax are hellish. Songs by Sunil Kashyup are major asset of the film, “Aaja Aaja”, “Pranama” and “Ee Ammailantha Enthaina” stand out. But the placement of songs is bad and they act as speed breakers to the narration. Cinematography by PG Vindha is okay. Production values of “Touchstone Film Productions” are fine.

Romeo has a weak storyline that fails to entertain and is tiresome to sit through. The movie infact is devoid of moments that would at least make us chortle. Instead we served with lame romance and humor. The writing could have been much better for this story, it tries hard to convince the audience but doesn’t.  On the whole, there was a reason Puri Jagannadh didn’t try to release Sairam Shankar’s Romeo on his own banner and left it languishing in cans for years. Stay away from it, as it has nothing to offer in the theatre or on home edition.

Survi Review: 1/5

Theatrical Trailer: