18, 20 LOVE STORY Review

Film: 18, 20 LOVE STORY Banner: Silpi Creations Cast: Sivaji, Shraddha Das, Manoj, Rineel Routh, Chinna, Vinod Kumar, master Bharath, MS, Pragathi, Jhansi etc Music: Sri Murali Cinematography: Sivakumar Director: Radhakrishna Producers: T Nageswar Rao, K Ramesh Babu Release Date: May 22, 2009 Story: A regular love story, the tale begins with Manoj (manoj) who is the son of a dhaba owner (chinna) and theirs is a helping family. On the other hand, there is Rupini (rineel), the daughter of the rich and powerful businessman J V (vinod kumar). The story takes a turn when Rupini's car meets with a small accident on a highway and Manoj comes and helps them. They fall in love instantly and in no time, their relationship is exposed at both homes. J V takes the help of Bullanna (sivaji) who is an old city guy and specializes in settlements, murders etc. Just when Bullanna is about to kill both son and father, his mother (pragathi) comes in between and vexed with her son's activities, she decides to kill herself. All this changes Bullanna and he decides to help Manoj and Rupini. What happens from there forms the rest of the story. Presentation: The director has come up with a routine story and both narrative and presentation were mediocre. The script did not have strength, the screenplay was just okay. Music was good in two songs and the background score was apt. camerawork could have been better, editing was required during the climax stages. Costumes and art department were neat, locations for songs were nice but they were not captured well. Manoj has a long way to go if he has to prove himself as an actor, he looks kiddish. Rineel was okay and sometimes she looked a bit odd. Vinod Kumar was nowhere near his caliber, Chinna was alright, master Bharat managed few laughs, Pragati was effective, Shraddha Das carried out her role as required. The real life and soul for this movie is Sivaji who came up with an impressive performance once again. The others were okay. Conclusion: The film was meant to be an intense love story but then it lacked the depth of the emotion at any point. While the first half has been quite dull and immature, it is the second half where things take an interesting turn and most of the credit goes to Sivaji for his strong screen presence. The mass audience will connect well with his performance. There was an overdose of mother sentiment and there was nothing catchy in the entire first half to engage the audience. The film will fizzle out in no time and whatever collections it gets, that will be due to Sivaji only. Rating: 1.5/5