Movie: Romeo
Director: Gopi Ganesh
Cast: Sairam Shankar, Adonika Rodricks, Ravi Teja
Rating: *
In an initial conversation between the two who supposedly get together in Romeo, Kittu (Sai Ram Shankar) and Samantha (Adonika), the former suddenly brings up a discussion on love and lust, loyally lifted from RGV’s twitter feeds, where he doesn’t exactly understand what he’s glorifying or undermining. The maker wouldn’t have been any less-embarrassed than seeing his tweet being put to use here. The male here fantasizes on the female protagonist’s physicality, gives her voyeuristic glances and utters the loosest of statements, which even make regular commercial fares look less-chauvinistic.
This, if taken seriously, could have been a serious case of oral and physical molestation, hinting us of his desperation levels. Romeo, shot in the most opulent of locales in European continent, is a Puri Jagannath-inflicted hangover, with a script written to celebrate the director’s ‘trademark’ philosophies, closest to the ones seen in Heart Attack and Iddarammayilatho, to reduce genders to compromised objects and films to one-sided impositions.
The USA-native Samantha, whom we initially empathize for, considering Kittu’s degrading methods, mouths a fake English accent throughout the narrative, inclusive of her repetitive pronunciations of ‘passport’. She’s a chatter-box and a ‘selfie’ girl at heart, recording every trivial glimpse of her rich-girl-themed holiday. The film, titled Romeo, for the poetic fact that it unfolds in Rome, also to possibly serve as a unflattering ‘love’ showcase, a low-brow tribute to Shakespeare’s male protagonist, has Kolaveri-lookalike tracks and a collage of special appearances, to not make this seem a two-dimensional exercise.
The script, as characterless as the sketches, has this ‘mobile’ formula, where actors of the scale of Ravi Teja, Ali, Jayasudha take turns to abuse and emotionally blackmail Samantha and later cajole her to fall for the ‘Romeo’. The reasons transport us to an atrociously staged one-song flashback. Her former boyfriend, then supposedly ‘turns’ negative and Kittu’s ploy works. Oops, doesn’t this get anymore desperate? Wait for more, when the guy literally forces her to hug him in the most-forced ‘Happy Ending’ sequence at an airport, where he talks the need of ‘transit-time’ in shifting boyfriends. We hear a background score, so ‘wannabe’ to the senses, resembling ‘Ye Maye Chesave’ at times, a fact that rather threatens. Romeo is an ‘experience’ and is in real need of a ‘disclaimer’. We require better reasons to watch a traveler’s indulgence.
Review by Srivathsan N. First published in Cinegoer.net