Love Guru Movie review

Vijay Anthony is back with yet another film, Romeo. The family drama directed by Vinayak Vaithianathan has been dubbed into Telugu as Love Guru. Mirnalini Ravi plays the female lead, and Barath Dhanasekar is the music composer. Read our review here.

Plot

Aravind(Vijay Antony) is in his early thirties and leads a single life in Malaysia. As his parents force him to settle down, he lands in India and falls for Leela(Mirnalini Ravi). On the other hand, Leela wants to become a heroine, which her family is strictly against. Just to come out of the strict family rules, she gets married to him. Aravind gets the shock of his life when he comes to know Leela only married him to fulfill her aspiration. Things become worse upon the entry of Vikram into the couple’s life. How will Aravind deal with such a tricky scenario is the rest of the story.

Performances

Vijay Antony, who plays serious roles, takes a U-turn and plays a comic role in Love Guru. Be it his body language or funny antics, Vijay Antony holds your attention till the end. In the second half, Vijay was amazing in a few sister sentiment scenes. Mirnalini Ravi gets a meaty role and impresses. Though she struggles a bit in a few confrontation scenes, when it comes to emotions, she is quite good. Yogi Babu fails to impress with his comedy. VTV.Ganesh was okay and evoked a few laughs.

Technical Aspects

Barath Dhanasekar’s music is nothing special, as not one track registers in your mind. But his BGM for a few emotional scenes was good. Farook J Basha’s cinematography was okay, but nothing special to rave about. Vijay Antony edited the film himself, and he did a poor job in the second half, which is slow and feels dragged a lot. Vinayak Vaithiyanathan’s writing is just about okay, but his screenplay lacks depth. It could not create much of an impact on the proceedings as most of the scenes and situations look routine and slow-paced.

What’s Good

Vijay Anthony’s performance
A few comedy scenes

What’s Bad

Routine Story
Slow pace
Predictable scenes

Analysis

Love Guru starts by portraying the life of Aravind, played by Vijay Anthony. A man in his thirties trying to avoid marriage, falling in love after landing in India and getting to know that his wife married him only for selfish reasons. Such stories have been made in plenty in Indian cinema, and Love Guru is nothing new in this regard. All this is showcased on a boring note in the first fifteen minutes of the film.

But once the couple gets married, things become a bit interesting. The entry of VTV Ganesh and Yogi Babu provides a few laughs here and there. The scenes executed between the couple look refreshing in the first half. In a way, you can say that Love Guru is loosely inspired by SRK’s Rab Ne Banadi Jodi. The emotional core of the husband going all out to make his wife’s dream get realized was so strong in the film, but sadly, that does not happen here.

One feels that the director should have added more pain in the emotional scenes to create more impact in the proceedings. The second half is the biggest villain in Love Guru. After a slow start, director Vinayak sets up the conflict quite nicely with humor and a few emotions. But when you think the emotion needs to go to the next level, it does not happen. The second half is filled with repeated scenes, and the sad part is that most of them are quite predictable.

A small twist or sudden change in the narrative in the second half has been handled quite well by the director. Though the film is relatable for the most part and has passable comedy, it suffers from predictability and also redundancy. If the core plot had been tighter and more emotional in the second half, things would have been a lot better. But that does not happen, and Love Guru ends as a film that has only a few moments that click.

Bottom Line – Nothing New

Rating: 2.25/5