Film: Jippaa Jimikki
Director: Ra Rajasekhar
Cast: Krishik Divakar, Kushbhu Prasad, Naren, Ilavarasu, Rajendran
It’s a roller coaster journey of two childhood friends who grow up hating each other, despite their families being close friends. And when their families get them engaged, the duo bides their time to break it off at the opportune moment. But to their discomfort and irritation, they find themselves thrown in each other’s company on a road-trip to attend a common friends’ wedding. It’s a predictable scenario with a sense of deja-vu throughout. The director has made no effort to make the road-trip interesting, exciting or different. So, while it’s ‘all is well’ for the couple at the end of the journey, for the viewers it’s a trying time sitting through it all.
It’s a road trip from Coimbatore to Coorg, with the usual missed-bus scene, the duo Krishik and Sruthi (Krishik, Kushbhu) find themselves stranded on the highway. They listen to stories on the way while they hitchhike in trucks, bikes and bullock carts, walk by streams, waterfalls and fields, encounter harassment from rowdies and ofcourse, escape from an almost-rape. The stories were supposed to instill in them the value of human relationships and a lesson on compatibility between life partners.
Ilavarasan as the truck driver has his story about a dead wife, and of how he regrets ill treating her. An old woman across the Karnataka border tells the couple about her platonic live-in with her lover of years. Their impending marriage had been cancelled after a feud between their respective families and they had decided to live the way they did. A lift in a van with some Tibetan monks, finally lands them in Coorg. We get a brief glimpse of the Tibetan colony. And then it’s time for the return journey. Nothing exciting happens on the way. Except that Rajendran makes his entry as a bullock cart driver, gets to sing a song and has his own tale to tell.
The director brings a silly twist at the end, but then falls back to the expected finale. The screenplay is listless, the narration insipid. Kushbhu cuts a pretty picture, but her face refuses to register expressions. 126 minutes of viewing time seems like a never-ending journey, monotonous, tedious and dreary.