Pallakilo Pellikoothuru Movie Reviews

Our film directors and producers must be the most optimistic people going around. They are the ones who believe that the audience will lap up any kind of film ----even if they are unabashed and tacky rehashes of some of the popular flicks of the time.

Take Pallakilo Pellikoothuru, the basic story (boy-meets-girl-falls-in-love-but-she-is-already-engaged-but-he-wins-in-the-end) has been hammered into an unbearable cliché recently by all and sundry. It is a sure bet to reduce even terminal insomniacs into sleeping jellies.

So to launch a new hero in a story that falls compactly into a few hyphens is an act of optimism, and by the end of three-hour flick you understand that the optimism is plain foolhardiness.

Gowtam (Gowtam, the son of comedian Brahmanandam) is like any modern film hero ---fun-loving, doting family man but doing nothing much else. His grandparents run a grooming school where they teach modern manners and the art of good living. Rani (Rathi), engaged to an NRI, comes to the school to transform from a gawky girl to a chic chick.

No prizes for guessing that Gowtam falls flat for Rani little realizing that she is already betrothed. The rest of the ho-hum marshmallow story is all about how the NRI suitor is left jilted while Rani and Gowtam walk down the aisle to live happily (?) ever after.

The hero Gowtam actually comes across as a man in need of some grooming school. His acting is in the kindergarten level as he is gawky and slightly overwhelmed by the occasion. The spontaneity that one sees in his father's performance (even in this film) is completely absent. He needs to get back to the drawing board before he signs up his next film.

The heroine, Rathi, though chirpy and much more consummate in her acting skills, has nothing much to do in a role that is no more than a cardboard caricature of thousand M & B heroines.

The rest of the cast have nothing much to do. The comedy is okay in the overall scheme of the film. The music, by Keeravani, suits the film --- if the story is something you have heard before, so is the music.

The director Suchitra Chnadrabose (in charge of choreography, too) lacks the skill to tell a story in an absorbing manner. Wonder what the veteran K Raghavendra Rao, who is a past master in these things, doing as a directorial supervisor?

Pallakilo Pellikoothuru is a case of triumph of hope over realities.