Radhe Shyam movie review: Prabhas and Pooja Hegde's romantic saga is as predictable as they come

In a world of cinema where the genre of romantic films has taken a back seat, Prabhas and Pooja Hedge arrive with Radhe Shyam playing star-crossed lovers who have to fight their fate in order to be together. Now there are a lot of reasons for fans to rush to the cinemas to watch Radhe Shyam – stunning visuals, a period love story, and of course Prabhas. However, there's just one reason not to – it is a disappointing watch.

Radhe Shyam is the story of a world renowned palmist Vikram Aditya who was banished from his country for having predicted 70’s emergency. The man now drifts between European nations, ticking off things for him bucket list and indulging in ‘flirtationship’ with many beautiful women. While he believes that the fate of all human beings is pre-destined what he had not predicted for himself was that he’d fall in love. Prabhas’ Vikram Aditya meets a thrill seeking doctor Prerna and they start their ‘flirtationship’ until destiny kicks in and provides a reality check.

While the basic premise of Radhe Shyam promises a love story for the ages, it is a hard film to relate to. The story and the performances fall short in making you feel everything that the stunningly displayed visuals trying to convey. The larger than life cinematography and visualization in fact begin to seem like a ploy to distract you from mess of narrative and if there’s an award for too much slow motion in one movie, Radhe Shyam takes the cake.

Not going to lie, the story presents the protagonists with near impossible odds to overcome in order to even begin imagining a future together but at no point do you find yourself feeling for the characters or even rooting for them. Pooja and Prabhas salvage what they can with their chemistry in a few scenes but that’s too little.

Pooja definitely sticks to her end of the deal but sadly the same can’t be said for Prabhas playing the romantic hero. You feel the awkwardness he’s emitting in any romantic scene.

Precious time of the first half has been wasted in a game of hide and seek where the two leads spend way too much time testing fate to see if they’d cross paths again instead of fleshing out a love story that could justify the extremes that the film goes through.

The production design is stunning but the ‘70s era in which the film is set in serves no purpose to the story. Let's not even mention the iconic scenes from Hollywood films ripped off and inserted in the plot.

Aside from Prabhas and Pooja, the remainder of the cast has barely anything to do. Actors like Bhagyashree, Kunal Kapoor who play Vikram Aditya’s family, for instance, are characters that simply don’t have any impact on the narrative.

The songs are nothing impressive and the background music is jarring in many places. Like every time Sathyaraj, who plays the guru to Prabhas’ character, enters the frame there’s a half sinister vibe added by the music as if he’d simply stand up and present himself as the villain even though the story doesn’t have one. A background track on Radhe Shyam seems to have been inserted to simply justify the title of the film in most of Prabhas and Pooja’s encounters in the second half.

There are complete sub-plots that seem to have been added to prove Prabhas’ character’s accuracy as a palmist but they were actually not needed at all. He predicted the Indian emergency, we get it he’s pretty bang on with the future stuff.

With all the fate testing that’s unfolding as the film goes on, it actually makes you wonder if the makers could predict the fate of their half baked mega budget film. It would have saved us all the mega disappointment that becomes Radhe Shyam.