Miss You Review | A Dysfunctional Relationship Rom-Com With Contrived Coincidences

As an idea, the core element of the new Siddharth movie Miss You has the scope to create curiosity in our minds. However, when it comes to the making, this concept becomes a very fragile skeleton for a movie that just goes after formulaic traits to create this typical song and dance package. With coincidences and exaggerations flooding the script that ultimately wants to be a romantic story about second chances, N Rajasekhar’s Miss You is a romantic comedy that is struggling to crack romance and comedy.

So Vasu, our hero, is an assistant director in the film industry. An assassination attempt was made on him, and that accident eventually led to a scenario where he faced intermediate memory loss. Vasu, who came back after that accident, had no clue about what happened in the last two years. Vasu went to Bangalore, and there he saw a girl named Subbulakshmi and fell in love with her. How the two-year-long memory loss affects this relationship is what we see in N Rajasekhar’s Miss You.

In the movie, Vasu is said to be an assistant director. But apart from the scene where he enters the Bangalore apartment, there is absolutely nothing in the film that will make us feel that he is an aspiring filmmaker. To be frank, at one point, I even thought about what happened to his dream of starting a coffee shop. There was no such dream for Vasu. But the emphasis given to Vasu and Coffee would make you forget about his filmmaker aspirations. This is precisely the problem with the writing of this movie. It has the advantage of having a unique scenario in a usual break-up patch-up love story. But sloppy comedy, unnecessary songs, forcefully stupid character behaviors, etc., are what they choose to flesh out the characters.

Siddharth had mentioned in his interviews that Miss You was more like a relaxed project after an emotionally exhausting project like Chithha, which he produced as well. So, in terms of performance, we can see that chilled-out Siddharth dancing and fighting in the film. Ashika Ranganath plays the role of Subbulakshmi. Her performance in the latter part of the timeline looks nice. But the earlier portions are lackluster, and the major share of that criticism should be shared with the poor writing that just wants to create humor for the sake of making it look funny. Since the hero has two phases, we have two best friends for him. Karunakaran and Bala Saravanan have done those parts, and both were occasionally funny, thanks to some cheeky lines. Sharath Lohithaswa plays the typical politician villain. Jayaprakash and Ponvannan are your usual Paasam overdose parents.

I wouldn’t call Miss You an irritating film. Because the film constantly teases you with the possibility of exploring the idea of a dysfunctional relationship. There is one moment in the scene where the hero sees the heroine at a wedding party. Post the song, when the friends asked him whether he found her actions cute and bubbly, Vasu’s reply felt more like a dig at some of the Tamil films that celebrated immaturity as cuteness. Writer-Director Rajasekhar is not making an effort to make the events look organic. The way Vasu meets Bobby, the character played by Karunakaran, is such an exaggerated Tamil cinema trope, and the series of coincidences in the movie is unbearable after a point. The songs really didn’t make much of an impression. The color palette of the cinematography keeps the film in that rom-com space.

Towards the end of the film, we see that Vasu is getting a chance to pitch a story to actor Suriya. As I already said, we don’t see any movie-making-related activity in the life of Vasu in the entire film, except for taking his partner to a movie and leaving that midway. And when such a guy got an opportunity to pitch a script to Suriya, I was like, this is precisely why Suriya is not getting hits. Even in films, he collaborates with less enthusiastic people.