Chennai Love Story Review: ★★★☆☆ (3/5)
Chennai Love Story earns genuine goodwill in its first half with an unconventional premise, real chemistry between its leads, and some of the year’s most soulful Telugu film music — then quietly surrenders most of that goodwill to a predictable second half that follows every familiar romantic drama beat without the spark that made the opening so promising.
Sri Gouri Priya is the film’s standout performer and Kiran Abbavaram is notably restrained and charming, but at nearly three hours the film tests patience it has not fully earned.
Rating: ★★★☆☆ (3/5)
Director: Ravi Namburi
Release: July 24, 2026
Language: Telugu
Cast: Kiran Abbavaram, Sri Gouri Priya, Trigun, Siri Hanmanth
Music: Mani Sharma
Runtime: ~180 mins
Telugu romantic cinema has a comfortable template. Heartbroken hero drowns his sorrows in drink, grows a beard, stares into the middle distance, and eventually finds redemption through a woman who believes in him. Chennai Love Story opens by doing something quietly radical — it hands every single one of those beats to the heroine instead.
Nivi, played by Sri Gouri Priya, is an IT professional in Chennai whose relationship ends suddenly and badly. She handles it the way Telugu heroes usually do — alcohol, self-pity, and a reluctance to move forward. Her friends take her to Chennai hoping a change of scene helps.
Instead, she meets Steven Shankar, played by Kiran Abbavaram — a cheerfully terrible aspiring film director who somehow ends up staying with them and, through his particular brand of warm, bumbling innocence, gradually changes how she sees things.
The premise’s second novelty is Steven himself. He is not a hidden genius waiting to be discovered. He is genuinely bad at writing scripts. It is Nivi who eventually inspires and shapes him into something better.
And when she finally decides she wants to be with him, she proposes — inside a temple — rather than waiting for him to make the move. These are small choices, but they add up to a first half that feels genuinely different from most Telugu romance.
Kiran Abbavaram plays significantly against type here. Gone is the hyper, wisecracking energy of his earlier roles. Steven is restrained, almost innocent, and Abbavaram carries that quality with surprising ease. His comedy timing remains sharp — a scene where Nivi asks if he wants to know about her previous relationship, and his honest, almost clinical response to it, gets the film’s biggest laugh and changes the mood completely.
Sri Gouri Priya is outstanding throughout. She handles emotional range that would challenge many more experienced performers and does it with a naturalism that makes every scene feel lived-in.
Mani Sharma’s music is one of the year’s best Telugu film soundtracks. Guruthunda and Jigithara work beautifully on screen, and his background score in a beach sequence where Steven finally achieves his dream — laughing, crying, floating in the water — is the film’s single most affecting moment.
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Then the interval arrives. And then, unfortunately, the second half.
The freshness evaporates almost immediately. The screenplay settles into familiar territory — triangular complications, melodrama, predictable emotional beats landing without the depth they need to land with. The runtime, already stretched to nearly three hours, starts to feel like it at precisely the moment you need the film to hold your attention hardest.
Worth watching for the first half, the music, and Sri Gouri Priya.
Chennai Love Story is now playing in cinemas.