'Inthalo Ennenni Vinthalo', starring Nandu in the lead, hit the screens this Friday.  Here is our review of the film.

Story:

Vishnu (Nandu) is all set to get married to Vandana (Sowmya Rajendran).  The marriage is less than a day away.  This is when his friends force him to throw up a bachelor's party at a bar.

A reluctant Vishnu obliges.  At the bar, a low-end but ruthless gangster arrives with Tara (Pooja Ramachandran).  One of the hero's friends instantly mistakes her for a whore and woos her.  She reacts favourably without the gangster's knowledge and asks the hero's friends to wait outside.

Least do they know that Tara has got other plans.  A kind-hearted Vishnu is potentially in serious trouble when she goes out of control.

To make the matters worse, one of the friends goes berserk and steals a cop's pistol.  Another friend ends up being honey-trapped.  It's a night of unexpected turn of events.  Vishnu now has to race against the time.  Or else, he will miss fiance Vandana forever.

Analysis:

Director Varaprasad Varikuti will not tell you this.  But we will tell you nevertheless.  The aforementioned story is not the film's actual story.  Technically, it's the story.  Honestly speaking, it's something else.  Kindly read it with patience:

Vishnu wants to sell off his treadmill on OLX.  Kilometers away, a stranger called Vandana wants to buy one.  This is how their Digital India-enabled destiny starts unfolding.  The girl and her ever-smiling mother immediately go to Vishnu's house in the evening.  The guy's semi-emotional mother receives them as if she has been waiting for them since ages.  She offers them coffee.  Vandana's mother says that her daughter has always been allergic to milk.  But then, life is wonderful.  Vishnu comes back from office.  He urges Vandana to have coffee just like that.  She overcomes her allergy in a nanosecond and empties the coffee cup.  (To be fair to her mother, she does later thank the guy and his illustrious family for the eternal good rendered - 'Mee punyama ani maa ammayi coffee thaguthundi andi ee madhya', she rattles off in a scene).

The ethically perfect Vishnu asks her to try treadmill once before she buys it.  The girl tries at her own romantic risk.  She loses balance.  The hero catches her.  A dream song follows in the bedroom even while their respective mothers must be busy discussing the importance of coffee in human lives.

Another day.  Vandana just emptied another cup of coffee.  She follows Vishnu and his pillion rider (a woman) to a bar & restaurant.  Vishnu is there to convince a friend that his wife (the pillion rider) deserves to work.  Vandana realizes that Vishnu is a modern-day everyday messiah.  These episodes are narrated as if it's an ad that is out to convince us that OLX has also got some fringe benefits.

To Vandana, Vishnu is a paragon of virtues, a purveyor of coffee, and a preserver of marriages.  To her father, however, Vishnu is a villain.  Why so?  There is a short, frighteningly outdated backstory and if it's narrated immediately, the film will not last the first half.

This is when the director came up with the story of Tara and a gangster, probably after emptying a few cups of coffee.  This is when the director conjured up the sub-plot of Vishnu's friend stealing a pistol in an inebriated state.  This is when the director conceived the sub-plot of another friend ending up being taken for a ride by a couple.  Had these elements been organic (the flashback telling Vishnu's backstory occupies a lion's share in the second half), the story would definitely have made sense.

The 30-minute stretch in the run-up to the interval is fairly interesting.  However, once it becomes clear that the existential threat that Vishnu faces from the gangster is vacuous (it's all about how soon he reaches Chevella), once we learn that the friends' troubles have no gravitas (the cop's behaviour is low-end comedy), there is nothing much left to be had.

Had the intention been to thrill the audience instead of being obsessed with projecting Nandu's character as a rare gem, 'IEV' might have at least sounded a bit updated.  The funny goondas, the same trope of everyone forgetting important phone numbers, etc is overplayed.

If the main cast members do a decent job, more was expected from the likes of Venu, Duvvasi Mohan and Mahesh Achantaa.   Yajamanya's music and cinematography by S Murali Mohan Reddy are sub-par.

Verdict:

A strictly wafer-thin plot, an almost laughable rom-com track, a curiously outdated flashback, and a crime angle that comes undone.  This is 'IEV'.