Meendum Oru Kadhal Kathai
Director: Mithran R Jawahar
Cast: Walter Philips, Isha Talwar, Nasser
Rating: 1/5
Really, one has seen love stories and love stories and love stories, some tragic, some not. Mithran Jawahar’s Meendum Oru Kadhal Kathai is -- as the title avers, A Love Story All Over Again -- precisely that. Except that Vinoth (played by debutant Walter Philips) is a Hindu in love with a Muslim girl, Ayesha (Isha Talwar). This again, is nothing novel. For, right from the days of Romeo and Juliet, one has seen two young people from warring families or different religions-castes-unequal economic backgrounds fall in love. Some are doomed, some not. The Shakespearean lovers perished. Much later, the characters portrayed by Kamal Hassan and Rathi Agnihotri in Ek Duje Ke Liye did as well. Jawahar is kinder.
The first half of Meendum Oru Kadhal Kathai is a silly romp of endless songs which sees the hero following the heroine (which in today’s parlance is called stalking, something Tamil cinema has been celebrating, but which society has been lambasting, especially after the recent incident of a young woman’s murder in a Chennai train station).
Well, post interval, Vinoth gets rid of his cold feet and declares his love. Ayesha runs away, till she decides that it is time to reciprocate. Playing Cupid here is a senior policeman, who brags to his fellow colleagues in uniform -- at one point -- that he had once kidnapped the girl he had loved! And he helps the young lovers, but not before Ayesha’s uncle (a great performance by Nasser) -- who had all along been keeping his younger brother virtually under his thumb -- beats up his niece and imprisons her in a room “where even the sun’s rays cannot touch her”. Can the story get sillier?
{{/usCountry}}Well, post interval, Vinoth gets rid of his cold feet and declares his love. Ayesha runs away, till she decides that it is time to reciprocate. Playing Cupid here is a senior policeman, who brags to his fellow colleagues in uniform -- at one point -- that he had once kidnapped the girl he had loved! And he helps the young lovers, but not before Ayesha’s uncle (a great performance by Nasser) -- who had all along been keeping his younger brother virtually under his thumb -- beats up his niece and imprisons her in a room “where even the sun’s rays cannot touch her”. Can the story get sillier?
{{/usCountry}}Eminently avoidable.
Watch the trailer of Meendum Oru Kadhal Kathai here: