Love Oh Love Movie Review:
Love Oh Love could easily have served as a reality check for dreamy lovers, reminding us how life stretches far beyond the love-dovey phase. But director Magesh Rajendran is less interested in crafting a coherent story rooted in interpersonal conflict than in stuffing the film with every idea he could come up with. The result is a romance drained of warmth and emotional conviction.
The film starts like Devathayai Kanden, as Pavish's Raghuvaran, similar to Dhanush's Babu, knocks on the doors of the police department, alleging that he has suffered a lot in his relationship with Avanthika (Naga Durga). He claims that if someone has to be arrested, it is she and not him. Police officer Harichandra (a joyless Selvaraghavan) is merely a character through whom the protagonists' flashbacks are revealed. The narrative cuts to the chase by skipping the meet-cute portions, which initially looked like clever writing. It doesn't take too many scenes to realise that it was actually a cop out. The screenplay screams shallowness. It is disturbing to see the rapidity with which a comedy scene turns serious, then transfigures into romance, and eventually ends in an emotional scene. This cycle keeps repeating till it cannot repeat anymore. No scene derives any emotion it intends to.
It is surprising how many writers and filmmakers, who attempt to make rom-coms and family drama, fail to capture the elemental aspects of interpersonal drama and some decent character nuances available in abundance in everyday life. What do they replace them with? Empty references like cartoon effects. There is a bombardment of tropes with no life in any of them. Raghu lives in a typical Tamil cinema 'Middle Class veedu' with a viboothi-smeared father (KS Ravikumar) advising about healthy money habits. A sister waiting to get married and a mother who secretly hands wads of cash from her savings. Nowhere do you really feel invested. You don't see a lot of their interiority to smile at their wins and worry over their losses. Nothing except for what happens to Raghu impacts them; they have no world or plans of their own. They only move mechanically through everything that happens to Raghu: First bike of the family or public humiliation, nothing moves you. The depiction of Avanthika's family is equally bad. Avanthika's mother, being a single parent, is revealed only towards the end, conveniently to serve as a tear-jerker. Neither Raghu nor Avanthika shows any semblance of coming from an emotionally complex background. None of the emotional turns in the second half is moving, as there was no hint suggesting Raghu and Avanthika were real people in the real world with real problems.
Director: Magesh Rajendran
Cast: Pavish, Naga Durga, Selvaraghavan, KS Ravikumar
The weakest link of the film is also romance. Do they have an earnest moment of togetherness that you would want them to unite? No. The makers confuse score-keeping for love. The absence of a meet-cute is felt with this superficial relationship that merely shifts from Raghu incurring debt due to spending for Avanthika, and Avanthika, in return, being unreasonable with her demands. At least a basic story of how they fell for each other might have given something for the audience to hold on to, to root for the two. On the contrary, the film is replete with reasons for the two to part ways for good. Many character transformations and arcs occur with no cue or explanation. There is no explanation of why Raghu, who distastefully compares romance to briyani, springs into action to whack a person who misbehaves with a girl and eventually says women and men are equal.
Love Oh Love feels like a Devathaiyai Kanden–meets–Vallavan romance that barely scratches the surface, yet makes no real attempt to capture the emotional heft of either film. It’s not often that you’re made to sit through a love story so thoroughly unlovable, one that mindlessly stacks up familiar tropes inanimately. The film moves with the mechanical ease of lending and repaying loans, similar to its plot, and is evidently devoid of warmth.
