Neethane En Ponvasantham

My review: Neethane En Ponvasantham 

Goutham Vasudev Menon's romantic tracks have always been over the top, far from reality and mushy. "Vinnai Thandi Varuvaya" was a bit of revelation as he tried to tone down and became subtle. But with his latest "Neethane En Ponvasantham " Gautham has once again fallen behind with poor writing where artificiality  rules the roost.

One wonders how can anyone take up such real people, real situations and real emotions in such an artificial manner. Except for the last 20 minutes, nowhere one feel for the people onscreen or get their emotions reflected on to them. This is by far the most silliest and uninteresting Gautham movie ("Nadunissi Naigal" included).

To make matters worse, the soggy screenplay is plagued by utterly mushy dialogues which are throwback to the era of Mohan's and Murali's. What happened to cinema as a visual medium. Where emotions can be portrayed visually, Gautham plays easy by tiring and cliched dialogues. It gets irritating when his protagonist speaks pages on how he feels looking at his sweetheart or how he is missing her. It is as if there is a running commentary for each and every emotions with blatant neglect of acting or director's visual imagery.

As said earlier last 20 minutes that just starts with the "Satru munbu" song is the redeeming factor of the movie. Those are the few reels of this movie which is contemporary. It is very sad to hear audience burst into laughter hearing Ilayaraja croon a sad bit song when the Heroine just learns that Hero is engaged, blame it on the bad direction. Also the background score during that conversation especially when she gets to hear that he is engaged brings back memories of all those movies in the 70's and 80's, the same music one hears when it is revealed that some one is having cancer. But for that Ilayaraja's background score is one of the few factors that keeps one awake.

Jiiva is earnest, tries his level best to portray a confusing character which is sketched poorly. Samantha has lots of scope in her role and she has utilized it well. But none of them look school-kiddish in that school love episode. It is one of those rare movies in which Shanthanam fails to evoke even a little bit of smile forget laughter. What was that wannabe spoof on "Vinnai Thandi  Varuvaya", seriously!

Ilayaraja's songs are awesome to put it subtly. All songs except "Pudikala maamu" are captivating melodies. As always picturization of songs are poor, Gautham Menon stills lags behind in this aspect of his. Background score is good.

There are two cinematographers M.S.Prabhu and Om Prakash with additional cinematography by S.R.Kathir. Wonder what three cinematographers where doing but there is no hint of discontinuity. Once promising editor Anthony has become lazy in recent times, that continues with this one too.

Jointly written by Gautham Vasudev Menon and Reshma Ghatala story is okayish but the screenplay is poor and direction lazy. On the whole, "Neethane En Ponvasantham" is the scrawniest of Gautham Vasudev Menon's movies so far ("Nadunissi Naigal" included !) .

Bottomline: Ulagathula ethanaiyo padangal irunthum na yaen intha padatha parthaen...!!!

2.5/5