100 Percent Kadhal Movie Review: A colossal failure of a film

100 Percent Kadhal Movie Review: A colossal failure of a film

This GV Prakash-starrer has so many problems that it should have probably been titled 100% problematic
Rating:(1 / 5)

100% Kaadhal, GV Prakash Kumar’s latest with Shalini Pandey, is a remake of the 2011 Telugu film 100% Love. You know how they say some things are better left in the past? This remake is clearly one of those. I haven’t watched the original, but the plot summary on Wikipedia tells me that not much has been changed; even the names of the leads remains the same. Maybe in 2011, the juvenile things that these leads do in the name of love might have been more palatable. But to hear things like “Why do girls need to study? After all, they’re going to get married to a guy who has worked hard and earns well, and live comfortably in his efforts,” in 2019 is downright ridiculous.

100% Kaadhal’s Balu (GV Prakash) says and believes in even more daft things — like eating chicken will not allow your brain to function normally. Or that only the first-rank holder gets ‘computer rights’. He prefers to calls the kids he tutors by their ranks. Balu’s entire life revolves around the ego boost he gets from being the ‘first’. So when Mahalakshmi (Shalini Pandey), an ‘average student’, tops him, his fragile ego is hurt. Balu finds inane ways to disturb her. Switches off her alarms, hides her books, and so forth. The funniest part is when later, Balu sweeps all of this under the ‘I did it because I love you’ blanket. If love were a human person, I am sure the Tamil film industry would have a slew of defamation cases to handle, for all the things that Tamil cinema does in the name of ‘love’.

Director: MM Chandramouli
Cast: GV Prakash Kumar, Shalini Pandey

After watching 100 % Kaadhal, I have grown to hate certain words, thanks to the leads’ incessant obsession with them. ‘Great’ is one of these. Balu is unhealthily fixated on being called so by Mahalakshmi. The minute she appreciates someone else, even if with the purest of intentions, our hero is ready to blow a fuse. The second is ‘infatuation’, which the film conveniently replaces for lust at points. For example, when Balu touches the waist of a sleeping Mahalakshmi, it's ‘infatuation’. There’s literally no reason for Mahalakshmi to be so besotted with Balu. It’s almost as if being the hero of the film is reason enough for her to love him.

100 % Kaadhal, in fact, has so many problems that it should have probably been titled 100% Problematic. A woman’s measurements become dining table conversation. Then there is Balu's repeated assertion that women ‘don’t need to study and should rather hit the gym and lose weight’. Mahalakshmi ‘loves’ another student, just so this boy will get distracted and they (Balu and herself) can ace the tests. Unsurprisingly, there’s a lot of objectification as well. When Mahalakshmi steps down from a train, we get a sneak peek at her navel. She asks Balu a question, he ogles at her navel. Mahalakshmi doesn’t rebuke him. Instead. She later ‘exposes’ to get Balu’s attention. I was too tired to be angry at a point.

100 % Kaadhal has zero percent romance, logic runs into the negatives, and humour is entirely imaginary. All of this only led to me walking out of the film with 100 per cent anger. 

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