My mother told me she wanted to see this movie, something she has never done!
Its been running for almost 40 weeks now, so I figured it should be easy to get a ticket. We went to PVR on a evening, and came back as tickets were sold out. We came back thinking we’ll come some other day. It was a mistake, we should’ve booked tickets for that other day!
Two days later we tried again, on a working day in the middle of the week, I thought things may be easier. Same story - all the shows for the day were booked. We then decided to try our luck in old-city theators, and barely managed second-class tickets in Sagar theator. There was actually a guy selling tickets in black(for a kannada movie!). phff.
Haven’t seen this kind of craze for a movie since 1980s I guess. So, expectations were certainly high.
Did the movie live up to a sky high expectations?
Sadly - no.
I know majority of folks have liked this movie. I have liked the overall movie too. But, I don’t think it is an extraordinary movie. There have been better movies in Kannada - from Story, Screenplay, Acting, even music perspective.
However, what this movie does well is tell a simple story in a very nice way.
The positives - The videography is eye pleasing, the dialogs aren’t corny and some are well thought out, Music is refreshing, with couple of songs having a infectious charm. More importantly, the lyrics for the music brings back the older poetic charm. Acting by Ganesh, Anantnag are good.
Negetives - Story is implausible. The whole story takes place in matter of a week. The hero and his mom go to Madikeri, 7 days in advance for the marriage of the heroine, where the heorine sees the hero for first time. And within 3-4 days, she is in love with him - enough for her to run-away from a marriage that her parents so dearly want. She knows her parents won’t approve, and also that it’d hurt her parents. Well anyone who is a realist will see the flaw in this line.
The other thing that may irritate some, who know the areas where this movie is shot, is that the movie scenes cover geographically distant locations in matter of minutes. From Madikeri to Jog, Sakleshpur to Madikeri(which are all hundreds of km apart), happen as part of a story line. Ofcourse, the movie doesn’t mention Jog or Sakleshpur, so that can be overlooked I suppose.
However, Positives overweigh the negetives. This movie doesn’t emotionally drain you unlike many tragedies. In fact, you really wonder if this is a tragedy at all.
Although the movie is billed as "hani hani prem kahani’(meaning love-story drop by drop), It isn’t really about love, but about the infatuation of a boy with a girl he sees in a city and co-incidentally sees againa nd again for a few more days. When the boy faces a situation where his infatuation may cause a lot of grief to lot of people whom he cares, he backs out, though heroine by then is interested.
I read a few discussions about if the hero was right to walk out of love for the sake of family/friends. I think those discussions miss the point that, true love takes time to develop and perhaps that’s the intelligent thing about the screenplay of this movie. By making him walkaway from the girl, the story writer has brough in the realism.
Though the second half, I was thinking the girl would back out at the last minute, when she realises the enormity of what she was about to do to her parents, for the sake of her’love’ of two days. Instead it is the boy who chooses to’sacrifice’ his’love’ of 7-8 days, for the sake of Girl’s dad, whom he has met just 7 days back. Somehow, the story would’ve been more plausible, if it was the girl who had done the’sacrifice’, which the boy accepts whole heartedly.:-)
Good movie to watch that has become a’MUST WATCH’ considering the situation in Kannada Film Industry, Decent Kannada movies perhaps come only once every few years. Last sensible movies I had seen were America, America and "nammoora Mandhara Hoove". eons back in time.