Second Hand

Story: Unlucky in love, Santosh (Sudheer) and Subba Rao (Kireeti) share their tragic love stories over a chance meeting. Then they run into Sahasra (Dhanya) who is struggling to choose between two men in her life.

Movie Review: It is more than a little unusual to see a debutante actress playing three different characters in the same movie. Well they are all pretty off beat characters. There is Deepu, who dumps her struggling photographer boyfriend, Santosh and gets hitched to a well to do groom handpicked by her father. Needless to say the guy is so heartbroken that he even considers suicide, ostensibly to teach her a lesson. But Santosh realises that his heartache pales in comparison to his friend, Subba Rao’s tale of woe.

Subbarao it is revealed gets married to Swecha who just can’t get over her ex-boyfriend. Unable to deal with it Subbarao literally runs away from her. Then there is Sahasra who can’t make up her mind about whom to marry – her ex (Chaitu) who impregnated her or her best friend who stood by her during her abortion. Thankfully the filmmaker avoids going down the women are so calculative road that most budget romcoms in Tollywood do these days.

While there is no woman bashing, the filmmaker does indulge in male heartache bit for the gags. Love is like a lemon crushed by a tractor goes a one liner. While another explains heartache as being as painful as having a heart crushed in Salman Khan’s hands. Then another cheeky one liner draws snide parallels between having a proper conversation being a snide reference to the act – of making love that is. The film is loaded with that kind of wry humor that the larky background score seeks to accentuate. But we’re afraid it’s all a little undercooked.

The acting on the other hand is surprisingly competent. Dhanya has the author backed role and she carries it off with flair. She looks a natural and a lot of credit for her performance must go to the director as well. Kireeti stands out with his goofy act while Vishnu sparkles with his dialogue delivery.

The cinematography and editing look a bit amateur like a lot of other aspects of the movie. All in all it’s interesting to watch but how much bang for your buck does the movie offer is something you will have to decide.