Release
date:
|
September 5, 2019
|
Director:
|
Dhyan Sreenivasan
|
Cast:
Language:
|
Nivin Pauly,
Nayanthara, Aju Varghese, Sreenivasan, Mallika Sukumaran, Vineeth
Sreenivasan, Renji Panicker
Malayalam and
Tamil
|
“Just name one
quality of Dinesh that has caused you to like him,” Shoba’s worried father
quietly beseeches her. His beautiful daughter has nothing to say in response.
The fact that she is supposedly in love with the Dinesh in question and this
scene comes well into the second half of Love
Action Drama speaks volumes about their relationship. An answer is nowhere
in sight even when the end credits roll around, which speaks volumes too about
the vapid writing of this film.
It takes a special
effort to cast Malayalam cinema’s sweetheart Nivin Pauly and Tamil-Telugu
megastar Nayanthara in the same project yet somehow end up with a flat,
man-centric, immature dramedy. Actor turned directorial debutant Dhyan Sreenivasan
manages that feat. You might imagine that Dhyan would be getting reams of
advice at home – he is, after all, the son of the venerable veteran
actor-writer Sreenivasan and younger sibling of the supremely successful
actor-director-singer Vineeth Sreenivasan. His connections, genes and the star
power of his lead cast are no match though for the shallow writing of this
film.
Love Action Drama is a romance in which it
is impossible to figure out from start to finish why the central couple are
into each other or whether they are into each other at all. They say they are
in love so we are forced to believe it but the writing of the bond between them
is sterile. The misplaced priorities in Dhyan’s screenplay are entirely to
blame. The characterisation of Shoba is sketchy at best. More time has
evidently been spent styling her than writing her. The result is that
Nayanthara looks stunning (although it would have helped to go easy on the oil
or lotion or whatever it is that her team used to shine her arms to distraction
in her introductory scene), but there is little we get to know about Shoba
beyond that she is a Chennai-based Malayali who runs some sort of business, and
as one man early in the film confides in another, she is that terrible F word.
You know, feminist. Hawww.
Dhyan treats the
female of the species like an alien race in the way a person might if he has
lived in a segregated society all his life and never had solid friendships
with women. In contrast, the writing of Dinesh is detailed. So is his
relationship with his friend Sagar (Aju Varghese).
Shoba and Dinesh
meet when she visits Kerala for her friend’s wedding. He is an alcoholic, chain
smoker and layabout, in mourning since he fancies himself to be in love with
the bride who is his cousin. His feelings clearly do not run very deep,
considering that by the end of the wedding he has transferred his
giggly affections to Shoba.
Like George from Premam – Pauly’s 2015 blockbuster –
Dinesh too is an immature guy from the beginning to the end of this journey. A
film may very well be centred around a kiddish adult, the problem arises here
because the film itself is kiddish. Love
Action Drama is no different from Premam
in the way it casually applies the word “love” to a man who saw a woman and
found her hot.
Besides, Dhyan lets
slip some really deep-seated prejudices masked in comedy in his film. At three
places, casual remarks by his characters reveal that he believes it is a given
that dark skin
is ugly. And what is with Malayalam
cinema’s insistence on depicting little children in serious romantic
relationships? Not funny at all, please.
The use of language
in Love Action Drama calls for a
discussion. The manner in which conversations shift from Malayalam to Tamil and
back is smooth and natural because of the milieu and the backgrounds of the
characters. But the Hindi words “beta”
(son) and “acchha” (okay) written
into lines spoken by Renji Panicker’s character do not trip lightly off the
actor’s tongue and end up coming across as a forced, somewhat tacky effort to
offer evidence that he is Mumbai based.
Like many Malayalam
music directors these days, Shaan Rahman really needs to get over his apparent
belief that injecting Hindi or English songs and lines into a film’s soundtrack
somehow ups its cool quotient. It is hard to understand this practice. Is it
that these artists think Malayalam is not cool enough? Or do they see Hindi and
English as the only possible indicators of modernity and an urban Indian
setting? By all means, mix languages, brother, if you can come up with
something special and it fits. What though is the point you hope to make when,
in a Malayalam-Tamil film set in Kerala and TN, you kick off the narrative with
a Hindi-English number titled Raathein
(Nights), a word that you cannot even get your singer Narayani Gopan to
pronounce correctly, which your lyricist Preeti Nambiar then follows up with
amateurish lines like “setting me afire / whatever we desire / come a little
closer to me” and “all I want tonight / touching you and feeling you and loving
yooooouuuu”? What is the purpose of the uninventive, heard-before refrain
“mere khayaalo ki malika tu” (woman,
you rule my thoughts) in Varavaayi?
The song that does manage a flow in its English-Malayalam blend is Kudukku possibly because lyricist Manu
Manjith does not
sound strained and because the amazing Vineeth
Sreenivasan imbues “On the floor baby / hit it hard baby / rock the party baby
/ pattoolangi podi (if you can’t,
then go to hell, woman)” with an intentionally over-done comedic tone that
complements and therefore acknowledges the unapologetic silliness of it all, though I do worry about the simmering animosity towards
the woman in these lines.
Love Action Drama works in parts when Dinesh
and Sagar are hanging out together and making an ass of themselves. The
effectiveness of some – not all – these scenes comes from the chemistry between
Nivin Pauly and Aju Varghese, and their natural comic abilities. Varghese is of
course cast incessantly as a comedian, Pauly’s filmography has offered him more
variety. What makes him the star that he is is his ability to be as grave as
his characters in films like Action Hero
Biju and Kayamkulam Kochunni have
required him to be, innocent and earnest as the chap he played in Bangalore Days and the silly fellow he
was in Premam.
Love Action Drama taps his versatility with
a narrative that repeatedly breaks its own mood by jumping from extreme
intensity to extreme frivolity without warning often within the same scene. The
switches are fun at first because they signal the writer-director’s keenness that
we not take his film too seriously. Fair enough. The technique wears thin
though as Love Action Drama’s lack of
substance becomes increasingly obvious and it wanders about aimlessly, wanders
again, then wanders some more.
Late in the film
some twists are set up as obstacles in the Shoba-Dinesh relationship. As it
happens, they do come as interesting surprises, but their impact is greatly
diluted by the absence of conviction in the first place in the relationship
that is sought to be destroyed. After having misbehaved terribly with Shoba,
at one point when Dinesh begs her to take him back, she says: “Convince my
father.” Convince yourselves first, ya.
Rating (out
of five stars): *1/2
CBFC Rating (India):
|
UA
|
Running time:
|
142 minutes
|
This review has also been published on Firstpost:
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