Roommates Review

AVS, who entered the film industry as a writer, later settled as an artiste like several of his co-stars like LB Sriram, Tanikella Bharani and MVS Haranatha Rao. However, he has a passion to direct films. To realize his dreams as director, he ventured into it and his first film did not do well. Later, he tried to project his son as hero in his direction again and it also went on as an average flick. Now, in his third attempt, AVS had succeeded as a director and served it as a delicious dish to the audiences. Especially, the choice of artistes, the subject, its narration and maintenance of suspense, all did wonders and the film proved a good entertainer.

Ramakrishna (Allari Naresh) is the son of a temple priest, Sekhar (Baladitya) is an orphan brought up by his maternal uncle, Seshu (Srinivasa Reddy), who was brought up by his grandmother and Bunty (Suman Setty) is the son of a toddy-taper. Ramakrishna is a Flutist; Sekhar plays Mridangam/drums, Bunty fond of playing keyboard while Seshu is a good Guitarist.

All these youth are fond of music and belong to the same village. One Narasimha, cheats all of them, and runs away after collecting Rs 2 lakh from each of them, in the name of sending them to Dubai. Hence they decide to end their lives, but survive miraculously. At this juncture they happen to meet a girl called Pallavi (Navneet Kaur), an event manager. They decide not to return to their village but prove themselves. Ramakrishna and Pallavi fall in love with each other.

In a bid to help Pavani, they go to Ravindra Bharati for stage decoration for SP Balasubrahmanyam's music concert. After Balu leaves, they start playing music and Balu happens to listen it and decides to promote them. When they were about to give their first stage performance, their life takes a turn with the death of Narasimha and they get implicated in a murder case. Jailer Bhargava (Nazar) helps them to escape from the jail.

The Home Minister (Nagababu) appoints Sarat Chandra (Naresh) as a special officer to investigate the case. Bhargava places the four youths in Sarat Chandra's house as security guards. Bhargava also advises the four to meet one retired High Court Judge (Subbaraya Sharma), who is preparing a file on the murder of Narasimha and similar murders that occurred earlier. By the time, they go to the judge's house, he found murdered and that case also falls on them. Sarat Chandra traces all the four accused in the house of Pallavi. He manages to arrange the music concert of these Roommates with the help of SP Balasubrahmanyam and the Home Minister.

After the end of the concert, Sarat Chandra proves that the four are innocent and the killer is none other than Bhargava as the latter is suffering from a mental ailment, which provoked him to kill people. The film ends on a happy note, as they get relieved from murder charge.

Naresh, Baladitya, Srinivasa Reddy and Suman Setty performed nicely and the characters looked tailor-made for them. Navneet Kaur, who played glam doll roles so far, had got an opportunity to perform and she utilized the opportunity well and looked homely with no revealing dresses.

Though the movement of the first half of the film is okay, but it failed to keep pace in the second half. The director maintained good suspense all through the film, besides maintaining good entertainment values. He etched all the characters well and all the artistes gave their best and did justice to their respective roles.

Editing by Nagireddy and cinematography by Srinivasa Reddy are adequate. Another interesting feature in the film is the music by Mani Sharma and incidentally this is the 100th film under his music direction.

All the songs are quite melodious and the background score elevated the film's tempo in several scenes.