July 7, 2014

For a film which wants to treat romance and breakup in a lighthearted manner, Yennamo Yedho (a remake of the Telugu film Ala Modalaindi) is tonally inconsistent. It has a silly framing device — a gangster wrongly kidnaps the hero to stop a marriage and forces him, at gun point, to narrate his tale. As for that tale, it all starts with a freak accident, which results in Gautham's girlfriend Simran falling in love with the doctor who treats him. Me… read the rest.

For a film which wants to treat romance and breakup in a lighthearted manner, Yennamo Yedho (a remake of the Telugu film Ala Modalaindi) is tonally inconsistent. It has a silly framing device — a gangster wrongly kidnaps the hero to stop a marriage and forces him, at gun point, to narrate his tale. As for that tale, it all starts with a freak accident, which results in Gautham's girlfriend Simran falling in love with the doctor who treats him. Meanwhile, he meets Nithya who was in love with the doctor. The two share their misery and become friends over a night of drunken revelry. Friendship turns to love for Gautham and when he decides to express his feelings for her, he learns Nithya is engaged to another guy, Raja. Distraught he hooks up with veterinarian Kavya, thinking that he loves her. How do Gautham and Nithya get together?

It is a convoluted plot that just feels inane on paper but one that could pass off as a comedy of the absurd on screen. But, because of its uneven tone, the film comes across as something that is severely disjointed and unfocussed. The initial sequences which result in the Gautham-Nithya meet-up are done in the right spirit and the extended and indulgent climax has the screwball vibe. But it is what is in between that is problematic.

The film has all the elements that we are familiar with — friends-turned-lovers, the friendly mom, the hero's friends who egg him on, the loser boyfriend/girlfriend (Raja and Kavya) who exist only to provide conflict, songs shot in foreign locations (of course, with foreign girls as backup dancers) and even a dog which plays a part in getting the lovers together. And each of these plot devices are used as and when necessary to keep the story moving forward and the effect strangely reminds us of a child with numerous playthings moving from one toy to the next as and when he is bored with one. So, we get a serious scene followed by a comedy scene followed by a romantic scene (sometimes with a song) followed by a scene in the present with the gangster and so on.

As a result, the romance doesn't feel organic, the sentiments seem superficial and the comedy comes across as juvenile, especially a gay stereotyping track. The performances too are phony. In most scenes, we are able to make out that the actors are performing between an 'action' and a 'cut'. Gautham Karthik does have the charm of his father but his role is poorly sketched that he cannot do much with it. As for Rakul, she manages to get her lip sync right at most times, but in the process, her performance becomes artificial. Only Prabhu, despite the amusing wig, acquits himself, especially in the latter portions when he uses his vocal inflections to bring out the comedy in the scenes.

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