Solo Boy movie review: A grounded struggler tale let down by simplification

In an industry often caught between fantasy and formula, Solo Boy attempts a third and rarely taken route: honesty. Naveen Kumar’s small yet earnest drama tries to capture the day-to-day turmoil of the middle class, especially the dreams and despair of a single-minded young man trying to rewrite his fate. There are no villains, no dramatic speeches, and for most of the first half, very few cinematic shortcuts. That in itself is something.

Director: Naveen Kumar 

Cast: Gautam Krishna, Ramya Pasupuleti, Shwetha Avasthi, Posani Krishna Murali

The film follows Krishnamurthy (played by Gautam Krishna), a modest young man raised by a loving mother and a principled father (Posani Krishna Murali, in fine form). Krishnamurthy is not a hero in the larger-than-life sense. He is just another boy-next-door who tries, fails, rebuilds, and keeps going. That makes the first hour of Solo Boy surprisingly effective. When Krishnamurthy falls in love with Priya and gets rejected, he doesn’t scream or sulk. He breaks down quietly and later receives a tender, wordless kind of support from his father. The emotional beats feel lived-in, not staged.

There is a dignity to how Solo Boy treats its characters. Neither of the two women in Krishna’s life, Priya (Ramya Pasupuleti) or Shruthi (Shwetha Avasthi), are villainised for their choices. They reject or leave him not out of cruelty, but because of real, material anxieties. Their decisions are shaped by survival, not manipulation. And more refreshingly, Krishna doesn’t counter their decisions with moral grandstanding. He accepts their perspectives, even when they hurt him.

That temperament defines the film’s best quality, which is its restraint. Even when Krishnamurthy gets betrayed by a friend who steals his app’s idea, he doesn’t explode. He simply processes it and moves on. Because Solo Boy is not interested in making him a larger-than-life man. He is a struggler in every sense of the word. He drives delivery bikes at night, hides pain behind a soft smile, and quietly takes on the weight of his father’s illness.

But that authenticity starts to fray the moment the film shifts gears. When Krishnamurthy decides to start a tech startup, Solo Boy enters a familiar trap, which is motivational fantasy without the groundwork. The scripting becomes surface-level. The process of building an app, pitching a product, or navigating the brutal chaos of the startup world is reduced to a few montages and a line of soapy dialogue. The idea that this boy, who was once struggling to pay rent, becomes a millionaire entrepreneur within a few sequences stretches believability to the point of parody. Sure, the film depicts his hardships, but not in a well-researched way.

This is a recurring problem in Indian struggler dramas. The detailing is absent. The hardships feel real, but the success feels scripted. We understand that Krishna’s app is about bridging farmers and customers directly through an app, but it's treated in a superficial way. The film wants us to applaud Krishna’s thought just because it's noble. The script wants to speak about struggle, but when it comes to reward, it takes the easy road.

The climax, too, feels emotionally unearned. Krishna’s final act of giving away his wealth to charity might work as an idea on paper, but on screen, it plays like a hasty moral wrap-up. It makes you question whether the film truly believes in ambition or if it’s just trying to retrofit a simplistic lesson about sacrifice.

Gautam Krishna, in the lead, delivers a performance marked more by effort than polish. He doesn’t try to chew the scenery, and that works in his favour. His voice modulation needs work, but there’s a quiet commitment in how he plays Krishnamurthy. He doesn’t try to make him a “hero,” which helps keep the early portions real. Posani Krishna Murali, as always, lends gravity without ever overplaying his hand. His scenes with Gautam are some of the film’s most emotionally affecting.

Technically, the film benefits immensely from two contributors, Judah Sandhy’s musical score and Thrilok Siddu’s cinematography. Sandhy’s background score manages to elevate several middling scenes, lending them a grace and sincerity they might not have had otherwise. His use of rock, strings, and commercial motifs never overwhelms. Siddu’s cinematography complements this tone, keeping things visually simple without being bland.

In the end, Solo Boy is a film that almost works. It has its heart in the right place and some truly honest passages, but its ambitions get the better of its craft. The journey feels personal and authentic until it suddenly doesn’t. What begins as a raw middle-class drama ends like a half-baked TED Talk. A film that reaches, but doesn’t always arrive.