Pookie Movie Review: A Gen-Z checklist without a beating heart
Pookie(1.5 / 5)
Pookie Movie Review:
In older films, remember how there would often be a title or theme-establishing scene? Likewise, during the opening minutes of the second half in Ganesh Chandra's Pookie, we see Kailash (Ajay Dhishan) swiping left one profile after the other, reading out loud what 'sexual' category they belong to; Sapiosexual and Demisexual, for instance. The problem with this scene is it exists only to flex the filmmaker's 'knowledge' of the Gen-Z lingo. The other problem is that this film, in its entirety, seems to exist for the same reason.
The film wastes no time in staging Kailash and Aazhi (Dhanusha)’s messy public breakup. While the narrative tracks their respective traumas, the more pressing question is how much emotional strain it expects the audience to endure. The problem with filmmakers who set out to capture the Gen-Z romance is their reluctance to accept that there is very little difference between the romance across generations, and stigmatising the concept of moving out of a toxic relationship. They have no qualms ascribing morality to 90s love and immorality to Gen Z love. However, Infidelity in marriage and relationships is a problem that dates back as far as the Tamil epic Silappathikaaram. Pookie is a bag of such generalisations. Like many films of its kind, it follows the familiar arc of a lead pair whose romance is dismissed as ‘modern’ and ‘flimsy’, only to gain legitimacy when it begins to resemble ‘old-time’ love.
When the understanding of modern romance itself is so biased and bigoted, it is needless to say how the breakups have been portrayed. While the decision to forgo overt cheesiness is mildly welcome, the alternative offered is hardly an improvement. Linearity is the only thing that works in favour of the film, but that too is mishandled as the screenplay does not sufficiently explain how and why it is important for Kailash and Aazhi to reunite. For any romantic film to resonate, we must be sold on the stories of the leads and root for them to stay together. In the absence of a compelling reason for their separation or sufficient drama in their reunion, Kailash and Aazhi feel emotionally remote, turning Pookie into a sinking ship.
Cast: Ajay Dhishan, RS Dhanusha, Pandiarajan
Director: MC Ganesh Chandra
The first half deals with how they cope with the breakup. Terms such as ‘stress eating’, ‘stress shopping’, and ‘binge-watching’ are tossed around to signal a new-gen love story, but without any real sincerity. The coping efforts of the leads neither move us emotionally nor are they laughter landmines. Trending meme templates — from dog-POV dubbing reels to caricatured Instagram influencers — only make the proceedings cornier. Aazhi gets constantly infantilised, and she ends up with a phoney guru in her pursuit of spirituality to overcome the heartbreak. When Aazhi stress eats, she realises that her ex was right about how she cannot even choose the right kind of food. It does not get more on-the-nose than Kailash insisting that being under her friend’s ‘control’ is undesirable, while being under his is somehow advisable. Meanwhile, Kailash is conveniently portrayed as doing everything right, from his coping mechanisms to his decision to hit the gym and reinvent himself as a fitness enthusiast. What the makers believed to be an interval 'bang' too falls flat.
In a rom-com, which has no grand world-saving plots, creating personal and warm characters becomes essential. Shockingly, Kailash and Aazhi are just plastic, and trend-chasers with zero individuality. The incidents that occur to them, too, aren't dramatic enough to spur the artificial characters into doing something worth watching. Kailash's father (Pandiarajan) is insulted by a relative, and only then does he realise that they don't have their own house. A moment that should have awakened a deeper sense of responsibility in Kailash instead dissolves into a perfunctory gesture, with him booking a flat almost immediately. A 'flat' resolution, if you would. The barrage of laboured jokes and Vijay Antony's jarring songs make Pookie an even tougher watch.
Leaving too much to our guess is not the purpose behind ridding elaborate flashbacks. But Ganesh Chandra has mistaken lazy writing for open-endedness, as his character designs are shy of even being termed as skeletal. We care little about whether Kailash and Aazhi reconcile, because we scarcely know them in the first place. What lead to their breakup? What they learnt from it? How they changed for one another? What they were willing to relinquish for love? We have no answers.
Pookie mistakes cultural referencing for cultural understanding. By reducing Gen-Z love to buzzwords, the film not only misreads its subject but also robs its characters of interiority. When a romance feels less real than the trends it references, the problem is not generational love — it is unimaginative storytelling.