Plot:

Kiran (Santosh Sobhan) is a loner working in a BPO who hates USA & NRI to the core. He happens to meet and eventually fall in love with Keerthi (Avika Gor), a software engineer who pledges to her persuasive father Bandireddi Sarveswar Rao (Ravibabu) to settle down in America in her childhood only. Srikanth (a childhood mutual friend of Kiran & Keerthi) is an NRI who is interested in Keerthi & wishes to marry her. Keerthi later realizes Kiran’s love but after a series of events, their relationship is strained due to their contrasting ideologies regarding settling in the US. Meanwhile Sarveswar Rao who doesn’t approve of Kiran-Keerthi’s love has some villainous plans along with Srikanth to break their relation. But an unexpected tragedy changes their lives. How did Kiran, Keerthi & their love stand against all these odds forms the rest of the story.

Performances:

Santosh Sobhan: This new boy (son of director late Sobhan of Varsham & Bobby fame) has got a natural ease which is quite impressive but somehow seeing him, one might be inevitably reminded of the body language and dialogue delivery of Nani & Srinivas Avasarala. This is Santhosh’s debut film but he hasn’t got an exemption here. He’s got promising talent but we need to wait and see how he unleashes his true potential in near future.

Avika Gor: The role she plays in the film is indeed a cake walk for her. However, this lucky charm for Telugu producers fails to add much value and beauty to the story.

Ravi Babu: This able actor and director who is expected a pivotal role in this romantic comedy is rather underutilized.

The rest of the cast including Satyakrishnan, Kireeti Damaraju, Abhishek Maharshi and others do a decent job.

Analysis:

Ram Mohan, a producer who earned goodwill for some wholesome entertainers like Ashta Chemma, Golconda High School & Uyyala Jampala etc has taken a big leap and turned a director this time. His story is set in an urban backdrop dealing with relationships in the upper middle class section. The love story gyrates around our hero’s hatred for USA and our heroine’s promise to her father. If you think there’s no villain then you are wrong – we have someone like Ravibabu heading the department. And yes we have a conflict point too!

But guess what, it isn’t robust enough to pillar the story and the director’s inability to deal with it convincingly is pretty evident from the first frame. Advertently/Inadvertently, in an attempt to make it a light hearted love story, the director failed to deal with any emotion seriously and the bottom fell out there. The hero imitates Nani & Srinivas Avasarala, the heroine is tough to bear and there is no magic in their love story. On top of it you don’t have familiar comedians or some true fun (except for few gags here) in this supposedly romantic comedy.  The songs are not appealing and of course there are no worthy scenes to host them too.  And we have unnecessary special appearances of guests like Srilakshmi also (however, the director-writer’s eye can be appreciated). At this juncture, when you are clueless where are things heading and why, the pace of the film starts bothering you! And towards the end, the already predictable story falls flat with some convenient and unconvincing reasoning.

On the brighter side, story has a refreshing conflict point with intriguing characters, some engaging performances and occasional gags blessed with some decent music – but unfortunately these aren’t the quintessential ingredients of an endearing love story (or romantic comedy).

In a nutshell, the film was rather a big horizontal line with miniscule highs and lows (which don’t deserve to be called so) and is the best testimony of a wasted opportunity. 

Merits:

Engaging performances of the lead cast especially Santosh, Kireeti, Ravibabu & Satyakrishna.

Refreshing line with Interesting characters.

Decent Music & Cinematography.

De-merits:

Screenplay & Treatment.

Music:

This is a typical Sunny MR album with some groovy numbers and melodies but they went unnoticed along with the back ground score.

Others:

Cinematography was decent enough while nothing was worth mentioning.

Verdict:

Thanu Nenu is a tedious love story of a good looking guy and girl with some good music & few gags here and there. It is basically a film that suspends between a short film & a feature film that may be loved on YouTube but frankly tough luck on the 70mm!