Behind the Movie Lovers: Popular youthful filmmaker Maruthi and rising hero Sumanth Ashwin’s combo is although abnormal, Nanditha’s presence is enough to keep the expectations high. Let us see, how debutant director Harinath exploited the brand of Maruthi here?
In the Movie Lovers: Sree Ram (Sumanth Ashwin) falls in love with two girls (Tejaswini, Shamili) only to end as a failure because of Chithra Balasubramanyam (Nanditha), being the common friend to both the girls decides Sree Ram as a flirt. Destiny plays the game and Sree Ram sincerely falls flat for Chithra without knowing a fact that she is reason behind his past love failures. Here on, Sree Ram introduces a forged character of madman Siddharth (Sapthagiri) to win the love of Chithra. Did he succeed and if so how did Church Father (MS) help both of them to realize their real love for each other is rest.
Values & Out of the Movie Lovers: Story wise, it’s a thin thread weaved with a fatty screenplay. Making audience believe on handsome hero winning his love with same girl who broke his past romantic affairs needed a faithful scripting and deeply sensitive narration. An incompetent Maruthi could not show a strong hold to keep the narration unbroken. The basic story line had many shortcomings to cover which debutant director Harinath failed to correct. In contrast, they cleverly played a safe ‘Madman’ game with Sapthagiri leaving the romantic essence for side deviation. Commercially Maruthi, Harinath’s idea worked to major extent and second half is packed with loads of humor. Dialogues of Maruthi coalesced with Sapthagiri’s timing has done the trick. Malhar Bhatt Joshi’s camera work is sober while Uddhav’s editing went mundane in first half. Among Maruthi’s team members, JB never disappointed so far and his music speaks here. Production values of Mayanazar and Maruthi Talkies ensured a quality on screen presentation.
Performance wise, Sumanth looked handsome with neat portrayal of diverse emotions. Yet, he should work a bit more on dialogue delivery. As usual Nanditha’s eyes do lot of talking and she excelled yet again. Above these two, Sapthagiri’s hate-women acts raise the course of movie to new high with half an hour or so non-stop humorous carnage. Spoofs on ‘Aththarintiki Daaredi, Magadheera (50 Women Episode)’ are sure to catch with frontbenchers. Sai Kumar Pampana continued his good comic work as friend of Sumanth. Of the rest Tejaswi, Shamili were beautiful while MS Narayana as Church Father could not assure for a convincing climax.
‘Lovers’ is a morale boosting movie for Sumanth and Nanditha while Maruthi’s weakness in grafting screenplay based scenes was profusely evident. Sumanth-Tejaswi and Sumanth-Shamili episodes were faintly treated with poor and unattractive dialogue writing. Mood and ambience to levitate the romance was missing. In turn, the decisive thrill during interval block connecting Sumanth with Nanditha was unaccounted for. Patrons felt asleep until an Interval Coffee and Sapthagiri woke them up. Grossly, ‘Lovers’ is although a frail film but by happy chance Maruthi did not touch his trademark ‘Boothu’ prescription. Most of the time, he struck to handling of the subject cleanly. Commercially, ‘Lovers’ can fare better in B & C centers.
Cinejosh Verdict of Lovers: Just Loved Sapthagiri.
Cinejosh Rating: 2.5
Reviewed by Srivaas