Premam Review - Lacks the Charm and the Wit of the Original

SethuMadhavan

Making a remake of a successful film is never easy as it appears. It’s true that one has a readymade concept with a screenplay that’s already worked well available at your discretion. But then along with that one has to also remember the kind of expectations that a remake always carries, and added to it is the constant comparison with the original film. Hence it’s no wonder that not many remakes across Indian languages are turning out to be successful of late. Alphonse Putharen’s Premam was a trendsetter not just for Malayalam cinema last year, but perhaps even for Indian cinema. After all it is one of the rare Malayalam films which reached out to non Malayalees as well, doing extremely well commercially outside the home state too. With the Telugu remake of the same (also titled as Premam) getting announced some time ago and with details of the cast and crew involved being revealed, the reactions it started fetching were varied.

And with the songs and the promos getting unveiled it wasn’t a surprise to see the remake being subjected to so many jokes and memes online. But the producers (S.Radha Krishna, P.D.V.Prasad and S.Naga Vamshi) struck it right with the choice of the release date, with the Dussehra holidays coming along; it seemed to be a good idea to have the film release as the main attraction this weekend for the Telugu audience. I do admit it is a little unfair to the filmmaker and the team behind the remake if one keeps harping about the original while doing a review. Truth be told I did try and watch the film without consciously trying to visualize a scene by scene comparison. Having seen the film let me admit that it wasn’t at all easy to do so, especially when there are no moments in the film that linger on with you well after one has finished watching the film.

For a film to succeed and especially for a remake of an already successful film, one needs to have moments and characters that leave a deep impact on the audience. When it comes to characterization in the Telugu remake one cannot think of anyone properly apart from Vikram and the 3 women who enter his life at various points of time. In case of the original the friends of George nearly played parallel leads in the film,that was the kind of scope that they received. Also various smaller characters make an impact in the original film with little or sometimes even no dialogues. Take for example the canteen in charge, the love struck couple in the classroom, the rather silent friend of George who is always around, be it to fix up a drink in college or to accompany his friends all the way to Kodaikanal. However that is not something that one gets to witness in the Telugu version. Director Chandoo Mondeti who made the successful thriller- Karthikeya earlier, has stuck to the basic template of the original film over here and has brought in some changes keeping in mind the nativity angle.

So Premam in Telugu is about the love life of Vikram as seen across three stages in his life, when he is 16 and still in school, at the age of 20 when he is in college and finally 11 years later when he is 31 at present and a successful chef who runs his own resto-bar.  While his teenage love for Suma (Anupama Parameswran) does not work out, he gets lucky in his college days as he falls for his lecturer Sitara (Shruti Haasan), only to see fate play a cruel game in their love story. Years later he goes on to meet Sindhu (Madonna Sebastian), so does he finally succeed in love this time? Nagarjuna and Venkatesh are seen in “friendly” cameos, much to the delight of the audience. Anupama Parameswaran and Madonna Sebastian basically do a repeat of their roles from the Malayalam original and are effective while Shruti Haasan looks lovely as always, but their love story does not evoke the necessary pain that was needed.

However it’s not a completely lost cause either, first of all it is one of Naga Chaitanya’s better works and he does manage to pull of the 3 different stages in his life comfortably. It is only when he tries to put on a “mass” avatar that he looks a little out of place. The music by Rajesh Murugesan and Gopi Sunder works, with quite a few of the original tracks being retained over here as well. And for those who haven’t watched the original film this one would possibly appeal as it is certainly better than the average fare on offer for the Telugu audience.

Bottomline

Premam by Chandoo Mondeti has a few things going for it and is watchable especially if you haven’t seen the original version in Malayalam. However, if compared with the original it just comes across as a pale version indeed.

Rating: 2.5/5