Iddari Lokam Okate Review

Bharath Vijayakumar

Our filmmakers keep finding numerous ways to present love stories. From falling in love at first sight to loving a person without seeing the actual person, every possible scenario has probably been presented on screen. One such category is predestined love, where the union of the couple has been fixed as soon as they set foot on earth as babies or even much before that. S.J. Suryah's Kushi is one film that comes to mind. Iddari Lokam Okate too begins in a hospital much like Kushi but this remake of the Turkish 'Love Likes Coincidences' is a more sober version that has fate playing tragic twists between the star crossed lovers.

When you are trying to make strong love stories you should rather go with the flow and make a honest film rather than being desperate about trying to deliver a classic. Iddari Lokam Okate has a few things going for it. The hero plays a photographer and the heroine an aspiring actress. The film begins in Ooty before shifting base to Hyderabad. So the film covers extreme landscapes(at least thematically) and the professions of the lead couple aren't exactly something that every other guy or girl does. Hence a certain novelty is established very early on. But all these remain very much at the surface level. Kushi worked as a light hearted entertainer and there are other romantic films that have a sense of sobriety throughout. Iddari Lokam Okate falls in between and it doesn't exactly capture the best of both worlds.

The biggest issue with the film is that we never get into the head of either of the leads and experience their emotions. We never ever feel their desperateness to be with each other. It all remains on paper. The emotions are almost always plastic. The actors too don't contribute much. There is actually a lot happening but it feels as though we are merely reading plot points from a bulleted list in a ppt.

Bottomline: Aiming to be an epic love story, Iddari Lokam Okate is let down by an uninspiring narration and the performances produce plastic emotions at best.

Rating: 2/5