Nilavuku En mel Ennadi Kobam - Mostly Mediocre with a Satisfying Finale!

Ashwin Ram

Nilavuku En mel Ennadi Kobam is a romantic drama directed by Dhanush. Introducing Pavish as the main lead, alongside Anikha Surendran, Mathew Thomas, etc. G.V. Prakash has composed the music.

Premise:

Pavish narrates his past relationship story with Anikha Surendran to his potential fiancée Priya Prakash Varrier. What happens when his ex-girlfriend decides to move on with an arranged marriage and the drama around it forms the remaining story.

Writing/ Direction:

The team promoted the film by calling it ‘An Usual Love Story’, and there is nothing groundbreaking as they mentioned. But the familiar ideas deserve a respectable packaging which is quite messy here. The age-old formula of a couple breaking up and how they patch up at the end is the core, despite a couple of efficient plot points, the underwhelming screenplay acts as the spoilsport. The hero is a chef, sadly everybody ridicules his profession, only the heroine respects him for what he does and hence the love blossoms. Sarathkumar is this stereotypical rich dad who insults the hero as he is from a middle class family, but their equation gets a valid upgrade when Pavish gets to know about Sarathkumar’s dying health condition. These nice elements don’t escalate big as the screenwriting is inconsistent, with a monotonous directorial choice of treating many situations in a cringe manner that further deteriorates the experience. Liked how one character or the other kept commenting like a devil’s advocate, however a few good counter dialogues can’t make up after presenting several boring stretches. The love portions are presented in a lifeless way for us to feel for their separation, the rooting aspect isn’t really there. The story world is vaguely set for the audience to relate with, leaving out the stature and class hierarchy, the age factor and why everybody, the hero to be specific getting married at a very young age has no justification. Some nice moments do exist, the flavourful friendship angle in particular, plus the last ten minutes is far better than the rest. The climax beautifully conveys how people are waiting for their chances to make a move, but giving a lead to the second part is a bit too much. Welcome move by Dhanush for not showing the heroine’s fiancée character played by Siddhartha Shankar in a bad light, and him explaining why his parents’ absence at the wedding was very sensible. The wedding planner character played by Ramya Ranganathan was mature too.

Performances:

Debutant Pavish is neat for the screen, but very minimal with respect to expressions, also he acts as a xerox copy Dhanush, even his voice feels like a replica of the star. Anikha Surendran looks beautiful and that’s it about her, she struggles to emote and the lack of maturity is evident in the pre-climax restroom scene. Mathew Thomas as hero’s best friend had better scope than the leads, he offers some theatre moments too, but clueless why he did not dub for himself and the voice artist failed to match his original caliber which made his presence very odd.

Technicalities:

Solid album by GV Prakash, especially Golden Sparrow is a vibe material and the unreleased climax song is like a soulful earworm. Decent background music, but the variety is missing, many repeat scores throughout and felt Anirudh’s touch in some orchestrations. Cool and colourful camera work that is apt for the film’s mood, but the lensing used put huge black-bars on both top and bottom of the screens. No big complaints in Prasanna GK’s editing, smooth scene transitions and he kept the overall runtime tidy too.

Bottomline

There are moments to attract the youth. Otherwise it is a formulaic flick which offers limited fun and needs more finesse in writing to hold well. Plenty of scenes are overdone both in terms of directorial approach and acting that appear to be cringe.

Rating - 2.5/ 5