Unnale Unnale is preachy and pretentious

Oscar Films' V Ravichandran produces "Unnale Unnale" (Tamil) directed by Jeeva and starring newcomer Vinay with Sada and Tanisha Mukherjee in the lead. Unnale... is the story of Karthik (Vinay), the tall, dark, handsome hero who is always surrounded by girls of various sizes and shapes. Karthik falls for Jancy (Sada), who is temperamentally just his opposite. Jancy is a very simple girl, extremely possessive about Karthik and will not tolerate Karthik even speaking to another girl. Jancy looks at Karthik with suspicion and cannot come to terms with his open minded nature. Problems erupt and their love story ends even before it begins properly. Fate has other plans for the duo however. They bump into each other in Melbourne, Australia. Jancy takes up a job there and Karthik is transferred to Melbourne for a project. Along with them, they have Deepika (Tanisha) also, who has come down with Karthik on the same flight to assist Jancy with her project. The rest of the film is all about how Karthik tries to evoke romantic feelings for him in Jancy, how Jancy spurns all of Karthik's advances, how Deepika tries to unite Karthik and Jancy and in the end falls for him. The film starts well. The romance between Karthik and Jancy and their consequent split is interestingly conveyed. But, once the story shifts to Australia and with Deepika's entry, the script goes haywire. All the characters start preaching about how a boy behaves, how a girl behaves, how the two behave in love, how should they ideally be blah blah blah!Its here that the dialogues start getting on your nerves and you start praying for the movie to end! Cinematographer turned script writer cum director Jeeva borrows heavily from the recent successful youth flicks- Karthik and Jancy's first meeting and exchange of words is lifted straight out of Mani Ratnam's "Alaipayuthe"; the scenes between Karthik and his friends (Raju Sundaram and Sreekanth) is inspired by Farhan Akhthar's "Dil Chahta Hai" and Deepika's plan of falling in love with Karthik in 10 days remind you of Nikhil Advani's "Kal Ho Naa Ho". Alas, if Jeeva's script was as interesting as any of the afore mentioned movies. New comer Vinay is good looking and is definitely, star material. However, he has a long way to go as far as acting is concerned. His lip syncing is horrible, making one clearly understand that Tamil is an alien language for him. His facial expressions and hand movements in emotional scenes look very awkward. He could have been made to appear neat in the movie by avoiding that stubble and bushy sideburns. Strangely, Sada maintains a surprised look throughout the movie, even in scenes where she is supposed to look angry. She, either has a problem with her facial anatomy or has some wrong notions about acting in her head. No wonder one does not get to see much of the actress in spite of having mega hits like Jayam and Anniyan to her credit. High time she thought seriously about improving her acting abilities lest she wants to become history soon! Tanisha Mukherjee is full of zest and energy. However, she too suffers from the lip sync problem, thanks to her complete ignorance of the Tamil language. She is nowhere close to her effervescent and natural sister, Kajol, who made an impressive appearance in Tamil in Rajiv Menon's "Minsarakkanavu" (1997) The photography by Jeeva is fabulous and the beauty of Melbourne has been very well captured by his lenses. The characters in the movie appear hip and trendy. A special mention must be made about the costumes and the complete natural look that all the three main characters sport. Tanisha's costumes are the cutest and the trendiest! However, what works the most in favor of the movie is Harris Jayaraj's music and background score. All the 7 songs in the movie are good and the songs- "June ponaal", "Muthal Muthalake", "Muthal Naal Indru" and "Vaikashi Nilave' stand out. The choreography is also very good. To conclude, Unnale Unnale is a classic example of body beautiful, soul zero and with a little more effort on the part of the script writer cum director Jeeva, could have been a real landmark movie.