All pomp and show, Radhe Shyam is a godawfully turgid romantic drama that sucks the air out of the genre with crushing gusts of bombast. The film is directed by Radha Krishna Kumar. The movie stars Prabhas, Pooja Hegde, Sachin Khedekar. The duo is forced to play along with their hands tied. The end result is calamitous.
Radhe Shyam, filmed in Telugu and Hindi simultaneously with two separate soundtracks and released nationwide, is projected as a big-budget extravaganza meant to sweep us off. With large portions of it shot in Europe, it is replete with lavish imagery and spectacular visual effects. But not much of what the film serves up delivers the sensory highs that it aims for.
A voice-over by Amitabh Bachchan on the pyaar-and-kismat dichotomy sets the tone for 140 minutes film that simply does not match the gravitas of the narrator’s famed baritone. There is no doubt, of course, that Prabhas’ screen presence is tremendous. The climatic stretch of Radhe Shyam lets the star slip into action-hero mode- though he isn’t taking on a human villain here.
Radhe Shyam is an ill-formed love story that is hard to fall in love with. If the devil is in the details, he is everywhere in this film, which seems to be out to prove that the line between blockbuster and lacklustre is very thin.
