“Yeto Vellipoyindi Manasu” (Telugu) or “Neethane Enn Ponvasantham”(Tamil) is Gautam Vasudev Menon’s latest film whose audio was released many months before the release date. Reason: Maestro Ilaya Raja composed music for the film. Maestro Ilaya Raja had done exceedingly well in the songs which are already chart-toppers. Atleast four out of the seven songs are haunting, hummable and lullaby-melodious. Music-wise, Ilaya Raja has done his part in giving amazing songs for the season, but director Gautam Menon hasn’t capitalized well on the genius of the Maestro. This is because the BGM is hardly perceived in the film – about 65 per cent of the movie is on silent track showing either dialogues between the hero and heroine, hero and his family, hero and his friend – and there is lack of cinematic twists or oscillation of emotions to let music drive the rest. That is why, for fans of Ilaya Raja, the film is a disappointment- sans the songs – which are already a “hit”. As a composer, Ilaya Raja has had an outstanding record in giving memorable BGMs and RR with directors like Mani Ratnam, Ram Gopal Varma, Bapu, K Balachandar, Suresh Krissna, Vishwanath, BharatiRaja, Balu Mahendra, Singeetham Srinivasa Rao, Vamshi and others. It is clearly director’s fault in failing to utilize such a talent that comes rarer than a Halley’s comet. Something has gone wrong with the soundtrack, in short.
What’s the movie all about? Naani and Samantha play Varun and Nithya - two mador-each-other kids who grow up in the same school, go to the same college and have the hots for each other despite huge strata differences, so different that Nithya vacations in Australia whereas Varun goes for Annavaram. And the story continues with time lapses at different periods with many cold wars and hot patchups, without any variety. Varun wakes up one day to be career-conscious while driving some sense in Nithya too that she needs to find a purpose in life beyond him. He writes CAT exams, gets into IIM Kozhikode (where else, Kerala!) and makes his career count – and then revisits his first love – who has found a new calling. She is helping out victims of Tsunami creating a new household. Varun and Nithya overcome their egos and regain each other’s love with a happy ending. Samantha is gorgeous and cute, sometimes tries to look erotic and sensual at the same time. But her style of acting will run out of steam soon if she continues with her ibby-jibbies - girly giggles, self-conscious eye gazes and half-smiles. She is also getting into a rare trap of letting her voice-over Chinmayi dictate her body language – that will make her trapped in an alien voice without giving vent to her talent. In the golden days, you had voices like Saritha, Shilpa and Roja Ramani heighten the characters with their voices dubbed for femme fatales. But Chinmayi is a good singer but comes out dramatically different in voice over – and Samantha is an easy bait for her; here, Samantha dances to the husky and superficial voice of Chinmayi on screen. Naani is a great actor and has put in the right sincerity required for a role of this kind. He is never loud, always apt and remarkably cool.
The lighter moments in the film come when Krishnudu and Samantha’s friends appear on screen. But the movie is mostly a drag and lousy to watch. It is tediously long at 151 minutes, monologous at most times, and inspid when dialogues appear. Gautam Menon couldn’t prevent the shadow of “Yee maaya Chesaave” on the film at most places – the film is again a quasi-documentary of love from K-12 days to Career days, mostly shows dialogues between the boy and girl in the form of conflicts in ego, perceptions and attitudes, and again shows a happy ending. Unless there are more episodes of variety to project on screen from Gautam’s personal experiences, Gautam should put paid to these twilight sagas of love and return to action films or police investigation stories, which are his forte. The movie could have done better with editing, and screenplay deftness. Some of the scenes are abrupt and don't connect with the previous ones.Lastly, he should get over the leanings of documentary film-makers; every scene comes with a subtitle: Nithya and Varun in school, Nithya and Varun at age 24 and so on. The audiences are too smarter to decipher these - if you want to show an annotated photo and video album from your personal life, show it on youtube and get more clicks but why does he have to inflict them on the audiences? On the whole, a boring and disappointing film from Mr Menon. I would rate it 1.5 on 5.
What’s the movie all about? Naani and Samantha play Varun and Nithya - two mador-each-other kids who grow up in the same school, go to the same college and have the hots for each other despite huge strata differences, so different that Nithya vacations in Australia whereas Varun goes for Annavaram. And the story continues with time lapses at different periods with many cold wars and hot patchups, without any variety. Varun wakes up one day to be career-conscious while driving some sense in Nithya too that she needs to find a purpose in life beyond him. He writes CAT exams, gets into IIM Kozhikode (where else, Kerala!) and makes his career count – and then revisits his first love – who has found a new calling. She is helping out victims of Tsunami creating a new household. Varun and Nithya overcome their egos and regain each other’s love with a happy ending. Samantha is gorgeous and cute, sometimes tries to look erotic and sensual at the same time. But her style of acting will run out of steam soon if she continues with her ibby-jibbies - girly giggles, self-conscious eye gazes and half-smiles. She is also getting into a rare trap of letting her voice-over Chinmayi dictate her body language – that will make her trapped in an alien voice without giving vent to her talent. In the golden days, you had voices like Saritha, Shilpa and Roja Ramani heighten the characters with their voices dubbed for femme fatales. But Chinmayi is a good singer but comes out dramatically different in voice over – and Samantha is an easy bait for her; here, Samantha dances to the husky and superficial voice of Chinmayi on screen. Naani is a great actor and has put in the right sincerity required for a role of this kind. He is never loud, always apt and remarkably cool.
The lighter moments in the film come when Krishnudu and Samantha’s friends appear on screen. But the movie is mostly a drag and lousy to watch. It is tediously long at 151 minutes, monologous at most times, and inspid when dialogues appear. Gautam Menon couldn’t prevent the shadow of “Yee maaya Chesaave” on the film at most places – the film is again a quasi-documentary of love from K-12 days to Career days, mostly shows dialogues between the boy and girl in the form of conflicts in ego, perceptions and attitudes, and again shows a happy ending. Unless there are more episodes of variety to project on screen from Gautam’s personal experiences, Gautam should put paid to these twilight sagas of love and return to action films or police investigation stories, which are his forte. The movie could have done better with editing, and screenplay deftness. Some of the scenes are abrupt and don't connect with the previous ones.Lastly, he should get over the leanings of documentary film-makers; every scene comes with a subtitle: Nithya and Varun in school, Nithya and Varun at age 24 and so on. The audiences are too smarter to decipher these - if you want to show an annotated photo and video album from your personal life, show it on youtube and get more clicks but why does he have to inflict them on the audiences? On the whole, a boring and disappointing film from Mr Menon. I would rate it 1.5 on 5.
