Relationship dramas often have a scene right at the start that sets the tone for the rest of the film. Director Swineeth S Sukumar’s Sweetheart! starts with lovers Manu (Gopika Ramesh) and Vasu (Rio Raj) breaking up their relationship. Like many other sequences in the film, it also has an intensity reminiscent of Prabhu Ram Vyas’ Lover, but the film squanders its little potential and meanders throughout its runtime only to end up in familiar ground. Sweetheart! is full of romance cliches and convenient screenwriting choices, and it even has moments of absurd humour that do not align with the poignant love story it strives to become.
The threadbare plot is as conventional as it gets. After her breakup, Manu realises that she is pregnant, and she grapples with the idea of holding on to the child and her fragile relationship with Vasu. The generic ‘will they, won’t they’ angle is not quite a dealbreaker; the main problem with Sweetheart! lies in the storytelling.
The characterisation is downright sketchy. We know very little about Manu and Vasu that piques our interest, other than the fact that the latter does not want to become a parent, unlike the former. The trope of parental neglect channelling the angst of a male lead is overused in a romantic drama. Sweetheart! goes one step further with a melodramatic passage explaining how the absence of his mother since childhood contributes to Vasu’s decision to not have children. Yuvan Shankar Raja’s music underlines the emotion, delivering it with broad strokes.
On the other hand, Manu shows an inexplicable inclination towards Vasu despite his occasional toxicity. When Manu’s parents catch them together in the bedroom on her birthday, Vasu reverts to slut-shaming to evade blame. He immediately apologises for it, but it is hard to understand how Manu can overlook all these rough edges in Vasu and embrace him for what he is. She does confront him about his character, but we never get to see a true transformation in him, which is a major flaw in a film that also has a coming-of-age angle. The flimsy writing extends to the supporting characters as well. For instance, the film fails to explain why Manu’s father (Renji Panicker) initially opposes her relationship with Vasu, only to have a last-minute change of heart.
Sweetheart! tries to make up for its flaws with a screenplay structure that reveals information intermittently—almost like a nonlinear structure. The narrative tries to make the film look smart and profound, but the deeper you look at it, the more hollow it appears. Take the bedroom scene, for instance. The film teases it at the start and circles its way back to the full scene at around the intermission, revealing exactly how it pans out. However, the extra information does not add anything new. When the film tries to communicate the same verbal information from a scene before visually, it only elongates the runtime.
Yuvan Shankar Raja’s soundtrack is pleasant to the ears but does very little to elevate the proceedings. The composer himself plays a cameo in a scene that shows the meet-cute moment between the two protagonists, and that occurs way too late and does not change our understanding of what they are like.
What keeps us somewhat interested in the goings-on is the acting by Rio Raj and Gopika Ramesh. The actors have great chemistry and play their respective roles with such earnestness that it is hard not to admire. Now, if only the screenplay had the same quality, we would have had an engrossing drama about broken ties and mended relationships.