Love Today:

Girl, Nikitha, breaks the news to dad. Dad wants to meet the boy, Uthaman. Dad agrees to the marriage on one condition: Uthaman and Nikitha need to exchange their phones for a day. Do they really know each other? They have nothing to hide, right? This is an interesting premise. Full of potential and great material for the writer and director to explore. Unfortunately, idea that looks good on paper doesn’t live up to its promise on the screen. I got the feel that director has list of jokes he wants to plug, has written the scenes to sneak that joke in and get a laugh out moment. To give him credit it does work for initial phase of the movie till it ventures into a space bordering on cringe. Sample this: Uthaman runs a site where the request is for women to share pictures of them in tribal costume for a movie (a movie he is not making. Nikitha or the director doesn’t want to know what he does with those pictures); Uthaman also owns the site where his circle of friends targets women with nasty messages including Nikitha’s sister. Uthaman claims he just created and owns the site. He never sent any of those offensive messages. At this point any girl with a grain of common sense would have walked away from this toxic personality. Not in Love today. Movie chugs along and we start wondering how they are going to sort out of this mess. Things start to go downhill when the director throws in morphed sex video and there is no way to redeem the movie from that point onwards. There is no effort to build a character arc for the protagonists. The intent of the movie I guess is to show how the current young generation views love, flirting, marriage and long term relationship but the conflicts we see is straight out of 80s – did you sleep with that person, virginity, possessiveness. Yogi Babu’s character exists just to send a PSA. All the actors give what is required of them, keep in mind though that script doesn’t demand much out of them. Yuvan with his score gives the best in the movie. Love Today joins the an interesting premise let down by lazy writing bucket of movies.

Irugapatru: Ignoring the flaws this emotional drama leaves you with a good warm feeling

From the outset director puts us in the midst of marital discord two couples go through. There is no time wasted to show their life before marriage – none of the courting or duet scenes. One is an arranged marriage and another love marriage. There is love lost between Divya and Arjun. They are not able to have a normal conversation and Sri feels Saniya is avoiding him. And she is. Rangesh is unhappy with his wife Pavithra who is not controlling her weight and wants a divorce. Arjun and Pavithra seek the help of the marriage counselor Mithra. Mithra and her husband Mano come across as perfect couple till the professional side of Mithra starts interfering with their relationship. Whether the three couple marriages survive the conflicts forms the core of the movie. There are good number of positives go in favor of the movie. The conflicts the couples face is viewed and analyzed from the psychological angle. The discussion on the root cause of the problems is weaved into the conversations and don’t come out as lecture for the most part. Same with Honesty Hour and Thank you Jar, they go with the story rather than sticking out as a medical prescription. What impressed me is the rift between Mithra and Mano, how Mithra’s profession and knowledge drives her to avoid conflicts and arguments with Mano, her fear that talking about her needs and expectations may lead to a break-up. What she encounters on her counseling front leads her to bottle up her needs and feelings. Shraddha Srinath, Saniya Iyappan, Abarnathi, Sri, Vidharth, Vikram Prabhu have given their best performances. Special call out to Vidharth and Abarnathi, they score few notches higher. The three couples come from different class segments of the society and the set design conveys that with detail. Score by Justin Prabhakarn goes well with the mood of the movie except in few scenes where I felt he could have avoided the cues. What are the negatives? Director could have avoided taking the drama style approach towards the end on how the closure comes between the couples, the court scene, or the race. Predictability of the drama in those scenes. Mithra explaining the four stages to Mano fits in a classroom not in a home setup – some rewriting would have helped. I will not bring up the confidentiality issue – Mithra discussing patient cases with her husband – let it slide under artistic liberty 😀 Considering the overall package these don’t come in the way. Irugapatru leaves us with a warm feeling.