Teenz Review: Patience-Testing Experiment!

Ashwin Ram

Teenz is an adventure mystery directed by R.Parthiban starring himself in an extended cameo alongside a bunch of kids. The music is scored by D.Imman.

Premise:

A group of school teens who live in the same community decide to show-off that they are grown ups to their parents who still treat them as kids. What happens to them after getting trapped in a vast dry land when they bunk school and try to go on a one-day-trip.

Writing/ Direction:

The opening stretch where the lengthy conversation takes place between the kids and they decide to go on a trip is not convincing, in the sense the reasoning is so lame. There are 13 kids in total, in which just one boy had a good role, the others have no variety in characterization from one another. And, they vanish one by one and it is impossible to recognize who is who. The majority of the film happens at an empty dry land, those portions are crashing bore. Neither refreshing nor interesting, and the worst part is that there is zero progression till the halfway mark. Parthiban arrives post-interval and confuses us further by uttering complicated terms like astro-physicist, electromagnetic waves, golden disc, etc. There is a small idea that has a story value, but the director miserably fails to develop that idea into a consumable film.

Performances:

Amateur performances from the kids, but the film has bigger issues than complaining about the newbies acting skills. Parthiban appears in a cameo out of nowhere, yet there is a purpose for his role, it isn’t convincing as the story is poorly portrayed. Yogi Babu barely does anything in his short cameo, feels like he has been casted for no reason.

Technicalities:

D.Imman’s songs are quite good and the background score is decent as well, but the film is so terrible that these things hardly add any value. Dull cinematography, the colour palette is single-dimensional and shot composition is old-school, the ones with Parthiban driving a bike for example. Crisp runtime, yet the film feels so lengthy due to the limitless lags that exist.

Bottomline

The core idea is exciting, except for that the film has no big credible values. The kids are used as tools to expose something big, but filled with unwanted elements that are nowhere engaging.

Rating - 1.5/ 5