Sometimes, a small budget film with little known artistes or a dubbed movie surprises and gives us our money’s worth of entertainment. If you think this week is a bore with no big releases and no point watching a film like this with a historical title, you are wrong. Go to Pandavullo Okkadu, a dubbed format of Kappal, which has director Kodandarami Reddy’s son Vaibhav playing the lead role. This actor has been underrated though time and again he has proved his skill as an artiste and for some unknown reason has settled down in Tamil cinema. A dubbed release always has critics panning it for having a heavy Tamil flavour; this one has nothing of that sort. Leave your intellect at home, relax and enjoy this innocent and funny movie.
The director, in the first 15 minutes, succeeds in capturing the attention of the audience with the hilarious commentary by Seshu; no flashback or childhood episode has been so entertaining as this in recent times. A group of school friends, five of them known for their notoriety and mischievousness, decide never to fall in love or marry when they see their icon, whom they’ve been idolising, grow beard and crestfallen suddenly, the reason being love failure. They decide that day that women are cause for doom and take a vow never to marry. But one of them, the hero, shows an interest in his classmate Gayatri. The boys who are thick friends take a leaf out of Mahabharat and like the five Pandava brothers offer roses to Gayatri and propose to her. It is a different story that Gayatri grows up to marry of one of these boys later in life.
One friend is hitched to Gayatri; Vasu (Vaibhav) who leaves the village and goes to the city falls in love with Deepika (Sonam Bajwa), a rich girl. After the initial rebuttals, she succumbs to his charm and the friends reach the city only to find their next friend in a compromising position. They decide to split the couple and finally give an ultimatum to Vasu to choose between friendship and a woman. They create a lot of misunderstandings and finally the three men too show an inclination towards marriage.
The story drags in between and never goes ahead for sometime, but that is a minor flaw. The end is predictable. But what keeps you going is the interesting screenplay and the innocent pranks of the young men.
Sonam does a decent job, she is slim and gets noticed and Vaibhav slips into his role effortlessly as a man torn between his friends and lover. Not that the jokes are fresh or extraordinary, the cast is perfect and the way they bring out the situational humour makes you sit through the second half of the film.
The film is technically fine, and there wasn’t any need for songs too.
Go for this fun ride.
Pandavullo Okkadu
Cast: Vaibhav, Sonam Bajwa
Direction: Karthik G Krish
Music: Natarajan Sankaran
Genre: Comedy
Plot: Pals decide not to marry but find themselves falling in love
Bottomline: Dialogues an asset, performance is cool.
