'Raja Vaaru Rani Gaaru' hit the screens this Friday, competing with 'Arjun Suravaram' in the main.  Here we present its review.  

Story:

Raja (Kiran Abbavaram) and Rani (Rahasya Gorak) are Intermediate classmates.  Throughout the course, the boy tries to say 'I love you' to the girl but keeps failing every single time.

Rani moves to a town to study Integrated Engineering and Raja's heart breaks into pieces since he doesn't know how to trace her.  Three-and-a-half years later, he is slightly a different man.

The rest of the film is about whether the male lead ever meets the female lead and confesses his love to her.  

Analysis:

Director Ravi Kiran Kola toys with a small idea, an idea so small that a web series alone would have been apt.  Making it into a 133-minute long film was uncalled for, and the end result is barely compelling.  

Some ideas, when stretched too much, can betray their emptiness with a vengeance.  This film does it just 30 minutes into the journey of Raja and his two friends (played by Rajkumar Kasireddy and Yazurved Gurram).  

Elaborate montage shots, too much of musical narration in terms of songs, and cliches (like that 'Bava' who doesn't deserve to marry the heroine because he is either awkward or too old or both) make this film an insubstantial outing.

When it comes to love stories of this sort, even one loose end can prove to be too costly.  And here, the loose end is both glaring and inane.  It takes 3.5 years for the male lead to know the name of the town where his sweetheart is studying despite him, his father and the two friends knowing the girl's father quite well.  

The male lead is shown to have descended into extreme anger and depression issues like 'Arjun Reddy'.  This is just for a few minutes.  Soon enough, he becomes almost normal, which is not convincing by any stretch.  A montage song reflects the hero's inner turmoil but the actor himself looks hardly weathered.  

Soon into the second half, some scenes get repetitive.  The banter becomes plain and indistinct after offering some healthy laughs in the first half.  A lovely moment between the lead pair in a temple is just one of the many cliches.    Had the female lead been fleshed out and her character shown to be sublime, there would have been scope for so much drama.  

The positives, however, are many.  The everyday language of the conversations is one of them.  The chemistry shared by the three friends is another big plus.  The actor who played the role of an aspiring politician is hilarious.  Some of the lines hit hard: 'Go beyond politics, movies and caste', a character tells a villager.  The neat performances by the film's non-actors stand out.  The greenery of the village, the smell of the rains, the conversations between elders and their children, etc are merits.

Jay Krish's background music is earnest.  The cinematography by Vidyasagar Chinta and Amardeep Guttula is pleasant.

Verdict:

The film comes with a wafer-thin storyline.  Story development goes for a toss.  At least one major character is not fleshed out.  The proceedings lack believability in the second half of the first half.  Cliches visit us in the second half and there is no respite after a point.  Amidst all this, the cinematography and music make the grade.