Rowdy Boys’ movie review: Music salvages this glitzy launch vehicle

A patchy college drama that launches Ashish Reddy is helped hugely by Devi Sri Prasad’s music

The Telugu film Rowdy Boys, which introduces producer Dil Raju’s nephew Ashish Reddy as the leading man, is like a cocktail of things that don’t blend together well, but is palatable now and then. It tries to be a coming-of-age story of an aimless guy caught in campus wars, finding romance and a purpose in life. Binding the story together is Devi Sri Prasad’s music. His medley of compositions in the last hour perks up the film.

The story unfolds in two campuses — a medical college and an engineering institute — situated beside one another. The rivalry between the two colleges gets fuelled whenever students from one campus try to court a girl from the other campus. The film opens with a cringe-inducing scene showing engineering boys harassing a female medical college student. How the boys redeem themselves is told through a long-winded story of Akshay (Ashish Reddy) who falls in love with Kavya (Anupama Parameswaran), a medical college student two years senior to him.

The first act establishes Akshay as an incorrigible brat who causes heartburn to his father (Srikanth Iyengar). A lavishly mounted intro song involves students of both campuses and later shows their ugly battles. At one point, Akshay waves his college flag from atop a burning bus and is proud of being talked about in news channels.