Endrendrum Punnagai

Endrendrum Punnagai or I should rather say a shallow interpretation of Farhan Akthar’s debut venture Dil Chahta Hei. While the hindi movie was quite successful in carrying the heavy emotional baggage with its real characters and sensible egos, Endrendrum Punnagai fails in creating such relatable characters and feelings.

The story revolves around the central protagonist Gautham. Due to one particular personal reason, Gautham is quite reluctant to accept women in his life and him and his close buddies made a promise to one another that they won’t get married. The breaking of this promise and how the life after this teaches Gautham about the problems of his attitude through various developments is the soul of the movie.

One positive that stood out was the way they used Santhanam as a character rather than a comedy generator. By adding some cool sequences after usual drama, they were able to build a much cooler friendship bonding in the beginning of the movie. But as the content progressed, only the friendship part got the attention, leaving the friends as mere comedians. The reasons for the ego and the way they treated the breakup of the close friends lacked maturity. Movie manages to get back into track through that beautiful romance phase in the second half but again the idea of some silly reasons spoiling the character evolution not only irritates the characters in the movie, but also the audience.

On screen Jiva was good in his portrayal. Vinay as the womanizer Sri and Santhanam as Baby also did the part of the cool friends effectively. Nassar showed his experience with his character portrayal. Trisha’s character was lovely as I felt it as the most sensible character in the movie. The on screen chemistry of the lead pair really helps the film. Andrea doesn’t have much to do than the rain dance.

The making part is a mix of ups and downs. The direction went to the typical treatment in many areas making the appealing frames look awkward. The screenplay seems to be confused about placing the humor.  All those second half humor involving Vinay and Santhanam were so out of the context. SMS jokes were there among the dialogues. The cinematography was cool. Some songs were irrelevant and Harris Jayaraj is finding it hard to produce really catchy tunes. The BGMs were nice and the cuts were also good.

Overall, its an average product. Some positives in the humor and the catchy romance part makes the movie watchable. But as I said Endrendrum Punnagai lacks rooted characters to make us travel along with them in this emotional journey. My rating is 2.5/5 for this machi-macha play.