Love Reddy Movie Review

Love Reddy is a title in the tradition of Telugu film titles like Samarasimha Reddy, Arjun Reddy and Zombie Reddy, but it a lot more than that. A labour of love by debut director Smaran Reddy and his team (which also consists of many newcomers), this small-budget film is a romantic drama set in a village on the border of Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka.

What is it about?

Anjan Ramachandra plays Narayana Reddy, a 30-year-old bachelor living with his large family in a village on the Andhra-Karnataka border. He works as a factory manager in Bengaluru and takes a bus from his village everyday to work. His family is worried about his single status, and wishes to see him get married as soon as possible. Narayana keeps rejecting Pelli Samandhalu that come his way because he has never fallen in love with anybody so far. Narayana particularly gets the most pressure from his younger brother (Ganesh DS), who cannot marry his girlfriend as long as his older brother is unmarried. Narayana’s life turns upside down when he sees Divya (Shravani), a government employee, and falls head over heels in love with her. Does Divya like Narayana back? Does he win her heart? Will they ever become a couple? These questions form the crux of this story.

Performances

Lead actors Anjan Ramachandra and Shravani take some time to grow on you as they are newcomers with no star power or conventional good looks. Shravani in particular aces the emotional scenes in the latter parts of the film. She also displays comfort in her dialogue delivery, which goes on to show why hiring native Telugu heroines for roles in Telugu cinema is important.

Shravani and Anjan remind one of couples from independently produced romantic web-series on YouTube. Their performances display more realism than glamour. The rest of the supporting cast lives did their part. All actors in the film speak a specific kind of Kannada-flavoured Telugu with great authenticity. NT Ramaswamy, playing the heroine’s father, is the surprise package of Love Reddy.

Technicalities

The film benefits the most from its authentic, real-time locations. The village Love Reddy is set in is full of colour,warmth and culture and the village practically plays a separate character in the film.

Love Reddy has 3-4 songs, composed by new-age composers Prince Henry and Kalyan Nayak, and two of them are pleasing to the ear.

Rains were recreated in the film using VFX and it comes off as both harsh and fake but that is not much of an issue as we only see rains for a few minutes in the film.

The cinematography and editing of the film are functional, as the film relies heavily on straightforward dialogic storytelling.

Thumbs-up

Performances
Music

Thumbs down

Use of outdated tropes in comedy
Predictable blocks
Abrupt breaks in heroine’s character arc
Generic direction

Analysis

The film takes the ‘Reddy’ title too seriously, with everyone in the film playing a member of this very community. In many films that tackle with caste, the struggles of inter-caste take center stage. But beneath the filmy love story, Love Reddy tries to explore the challenges certain couples face in getting their parents to agree for their marriage, despite belonging to the same caste (in this case, Reddys).

There are some struggles in the romantic part of the film, one involving a brother, which are not commonly displayed in Telugu cinema.

The film is never subtle about its caste affiliations, which is a very unconventional choice, as you clearly risk alienating other communities by highlighting one community so prominently. Smaran Reddy notably uses the film to highlight both the good and bad aspects of his community. However, the narrative gets repetitive and ordinary with dragged scenes between natural and melodramatic scenes.

After this year’s sleeper hit Aay, which highlighted the social realities of Kamma and Kapu communities in Andhra in a satirical manner, we have Love Reddy, which does the same with the Reddy community in Rayalaseema. But, Love Reddy sticks to realistic storytelling until it switches to predictable and boring narrative. The unique perspective treated with weak execution leaves this love story impacless.

Bottomline: Tedious Love Story