Film: Julieum 4 Perum
Cast: Amudhavanan, George Vijay, Sathish RV, Yoganand, Alya Manasa
Director: Sathish RV
The resultant confusion when a dog named Julie and a young girl with the same name, go missing, forms the crux of the plot. The film with a debutant director at the helm has freshers in its cast and crew. With its simplistic screenplay and at times juvenile execution, the film seems to be targeted at below-7-kids.
The narration travels on a triple-track, the stories converging midway through. Three friends arrive in the city in search of livelihood and stay with a common friend. Cheated of their money by Unmai Chelvan, a scamster who had promised them jobs, they are determined to get the money back. Its then, that the opportunity presents itself.
The cast of debutantes fit in suitably. Manisha, a wealthy heiress, is gifted a dog Julie by her father a businessman abroad. A ‘lucky’ dog, believed to turn the fortune of its owner, Manisha gets deeply attached to her new companion. The friends who strike a friendship with Manisha decide to steal Julie. What follows brings to mind the travails of the ‘lucky’ fish in Kattappava Kanom. There was scope for a love angle to develop here, but the director focused on his theme, appreciably stays clear of it. Of mild interest is the modus operandi of the gang that delivered the dog to Manisha. International conmen, they would sell a dog of impeccable pedigree, bide their time and later steal it and resell it to unsuspecting customers abroad.
The confusion gets confounded when Julie the daughter of a wealthy man elopes with her lover. The play on the name Julie, the cross-talk confusion that leads to the quartet being suspects in the case of the missing girl, all form part of the script. The extended scenario of the face-off between the friends and Julie’s lover Karthik, are boring, wasted moments.
The episodes where the friends turn the situation to their advantage, the cop too taking mileage out of it, are the better worked out moments in the film. Mahanadi Shankar as the cop gets a meaty role and makes the most of it. A small budgeted film, the production values are low and this is evident throughout. Mildly amusing, what the film needed was a screenplay that had more punch and fizz in it. At the most, Julieum… is a promising effort by a debutant maker.