Ekk Deewana Tha

There is something too arty farty about most Gautham Menon movies or is it just my imagination playing tricks on me. Something that tells me that the man is one of those eccentric, unpredictable directors who makes movies really slow under the pretext of calling them good art. Something to the extent of saying that each frame should tell a story and therefore the audience should be given time to absorb it and so on and so forth.

Arre bhai – agreed but that doesn’t mean that words should have space bars between them even when you are speaking… or does it? Gautham could save at least 30% of screen time if he just stops asking his actors to put an emphasis on a pregnant pause after each word that they speak. Ekk Deewana Tha is no different from his other attempts to date. In fairness, the pauses are required in some of his movies but EDT does not fall into that category at all.

Ekk Deewana Tha is a remake of the Tamil movie Vinnaithaandi Varuvaayaa (Will you cross the skies for me?) which Gautham himself made a couple of years back. It tracks the story of Sachin (Pratiek – who prefers not to use his father’s family name anymore – not that it is getting him to act any better) who falls head over heels for Jessie Joseph (Amy “look how gorgeous I look in a saree” Jackson) at first sight.

But there are several problems on the way. 1. She is a Christian and Sachin’s family are Maharashtrian Brahmins. 2. She is a year older. 3. She has a brother who looks and behaves like a goon. 4. She has a father who is 6’ 3” tall and thinks going to the movies is a sin. 5. She has seen only 5 movies in her life and Sachin wants to make a career in the movies. 6. Sachin himself is the biggest problem of all with all of 22 years under his belt and little or no experience in matters of the heart.

EDT should have released on the Friday before Valentine’s Day and not after. It would have guaranteed full houses. I wonder why there was a delay. Gautham Sir could have been laughing his way to the bank by now. From what I understand, the younger generation had a lot of expectations from the movie. And that Pratiek has a big following. This author however believes that Pratiek is as constipated as ever. No signs of genes there. If Amy Jackson has dubbed herself, then it is a fantastic first time effort. The rest of the cast doesn’t really have much of a role to play.

On one hand, Gautham Menon uses great camera angles and has done justice to the Malayalam aspect by retaining the Mallu dialogues. On the other hand there are gross consistency errors with no attention to detail – like soft spoken dialogues on a bike or absolutely no cuts and bruises after a fight scene. And then there is the aspect of the movie being terribly slow. Rahman’s music also seems to be one of his lesser works. But despite all of that, probably the best Bollywood movie released over 2 weekends. Worth a dekko I say 5.5 on 10.

Watch the trailer at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6b462zkgJA&feature=fvst