Orange is to be watched with someone you love. The question is do you watch it with the person who loves you or with the person you love. If you can honestly answer (many) questions like this step into the movie hall otherwise listen to the excellent audio and catch Ram Charan’s rocking dance moves in video clips!

What’s it about: Bhaskar takes a theme at the very core of love. Through his characters Ram (Ram Charan Tej) and Jaanu (Genelia) he asks you a simple question. Does true love liberate or suffocate? Ram begins telling Jaanu that true love liberates at first and suffocates eventually. So our Mr Ram who calls himself the World’s greatest lover, falls in and out of love ten times, but to his credit he attributes the falling out of love on his belief of never lying to the one you love. Essentially Ram surmises that the only way to stay “truly in love” is to keep living a life of continuous lies. In one of the memorable lines in the film, he tells his buddy “we all take the first chance to fall in love and not even bother to take the last chance to stay out of it.” In other words Ram says most marital relationships stay that way only because they do not know any other way. True. But terrifying!

What is Good: Genelia is great. Bhaskar and Ram are good. This is a bold movie to make with a hero whose last movie rewrote the genre of action movies in Tollywood. But to his credit, Bhaskar delivers within the confines of Tollywood’s traditional endings. As far as Ram Charan Tej is concerned this movie shows he can really hold his own in the acting department too. We all know he dances well. Of course thanks to excellent stunt choreographers the fight sequences these days are more like ballet bits. But in the late second half Ram Charan drops his guard and surrenders to the camera. Especially in the second half he emotes honestly. When he brushes aside Shezan Padamsee’s claustrophobic love in the second half one can see true relief in Ram’s eyes. The relief of a man who need not live a lie in the name of love. There are many such moments. The scene where Jaanu’s mom tells her that couples marry because of love and stay married because of children has a ring of bitter truth about it. The music by Harris Jeyaraj is rhythmic and has not surprisingly topped the charts. But the scene stealer is Genelia. This Goan lass can act. Behind all that girlish giggles there is a serious actor lurking.

What is bad: Characterization is weak. Ram’s character especially has some fundamental flaws. For a man who does not believe in love he goes chasing it a good 10 times! Brahmanandam as Puppy is Jaanu’s confidante, and perhaps for the first time one gets a feeling he is beginning to get wasted. Sure he gets his share of laughs. But those are because he is Brahmanandam, not because he is Puppy. The same can be said for Prabhu. Whatever he was doing in the film, had no relevance to the story. Ditto with Prakash Raj too. Some serious editing needs to be done. The movie is nearly 3 hours and that’s frightfully way too long for today’s Facebook generation. And for such a long movie the climax is very unconvincing and weak.

Tailpiece: Orange cannot be looked at form the hit or flop angle. It is a love story that questions the very basis of falling in love. So there will be times when this movie will seek your involvement and question your stereotyped assumptions of love. Be prepared to have the answers when you walk out of the theatre!