We fight, we break up. We kiss, we make up - Precisely what the lead actors of Yeto Vellipoyindi Manasu, Nani and Samantha, limit themselves to.
Childhood sweethearts, who grow up together, keep falling in and out of love with each other, randomly part ways, randomly patch up, randomly realise their goals in life and randomly, finally, get married! Don’t ask what next.
Then, you have to go back to Sakhi! Amidst all this chaos, confusion and “I-dont-know-who-is-to-blamefor- this” situations, and a spoof of Ye Maye Chesave, director Gautam Menon narrates Yeto Vellipoyindi Manasu - love story of Varun (Nani) and Nithya (Samantha). Already filmed about a zillion times, the movie is a love story of a rich girl and a middle class boy.
What’s new? Well, contemporary family drama with practical parents, cooperative and non-annoying siblings, no threatening messages from the girl’s father and no forced weddings with the villain’s kid.
And why doesn’t the film work? Simple - Though viewers can connect to the subject and the characters, the movie lacks basic essence to it.
The whole idea as to why it was shot and what did the director intend to convey through the movie remains fuzzy.
After the really hyped promos and publicity techniques, the movie fails to live up to the wave it created. However, the lead actors manage to anchor the responsibility to an extent. Having already worked on Eega together, they seemed to carry off their roles with ease.
Nani as Varun is emotional, caring, ambitious and very egoistic who realises his dreams overnight and in no time, affords international holidays for his parents. While Nithya’s role is like late realisation.
Initially portrayed as a peppy school kid, she becomes dumb, then, silly and finally, an activist who rebuilds a school in a Tsunami-hit Tamil Nadu village! It has some poignant moments, beautiful frames, and realistic performances, but at the same time, suffers from sloppy narration.
Ilaiyaraja’s music and the background score are the saving grace of the movie. The eight melodious tracks are sure to impress. Moving on to direction, it is not Gautham Menon’s best. His experimentation with this kind of format might not click with the masses.
It’s too slow. Screenplay, story and narration are raw and unedited. May be, it was intentional, which did not look intentional. Comparing it with Gautam Menon’s previous flick Ye Maya Chesave would be unfair, as both the movies are poles apart, except for the genre.
Samantha looks exactly the same and people who have already watched Ye Maya Chesave will confuse her with Jenny (Samantha’s character in Ye Maya Chesave).
Her husky voice somehow represents the whole personality of her character and definitely, looks like a class 12 kid, but Nani without the mustache might look on the border of a final engineering student with a few back logs, but not younger than that.
Come on! Is it made for the masses? May be, or may be not. The movie as a whole is an average watch.
