Romance With Finance Review

While watching Romance With Finance, you can't miss two constants: the extended videoshoots of the heroine, and the number of times the hero rubs his chest for different reasons.  The hero (played by Sathish Babu) keeps that unclear expression on his face, so much so you are as clueless about his facial expressions as you are about the girl's (played by Mereena) volte-face.

Jai (Sathish Babu) and Chaitra (Mereena) study in a college that is peopled with a Love Guru who is never seen giving a single tip, guys who open their mouth at the sight of girls or a lady lecturer, so on and so forth.  Jai woos Chaitra and after weeks and weeks of making him swoon over her smiles and all in those extended videoshoots, she goes to his farm house on her birthday.  The hero kisses her for good.  She feels shy about it for good.  Before you know, it's a volte-face.

Romance is juxtaposed with finace.  While romance is represented by the Sathish-Mereena duo, finance is represented by Manisha, who tricks 'bakras' into spending money on her.  The theme is about which one between romance and finance emerges victorious, enabled by a handful of comedy goondas who appear in the climax just in time to help our hero lose his balance, and win back love.

The wafer-thin storyline takes you by surprise, besides of course subjecting you to a shock therapy with its witless and listless characters.  Our hero's friend Suresh seems to be more disturbed about all this than even our jilted lover boy.

For a good part, our director (Raju Kumpatla) forgets all about the forgettable love story and showcases the irrepressible desire of a Telugu filmmaker to indulge in parodies.  Gabbar Singh, Pawan Kalyan, Happy Days, Idiot - everything is brought in with the hope of eliciting some laughs.  Once or twice, he banks upon double meaning jokes that especially children like a lot!

Dhanraj, Chalaki Chanti, and an item song add to our woes.  Sathish Babu's inexplicable attempt at doing comedy in the first half (read the comedy scene where our drunken hero breaks into broken English, and eats leaves) could have been justifably avoided.

The technical departments bite the dust.

Verdict: A paper-thin story that falls apart cluelessly and thanklessly.