Left to itself, ‘Pora Pove’ would have gone to the extent of suggesting that a government-initiated outreach programme for children/students from all-girls/boys schools/colleges, is the need of the hour. In one of those pseudo-melodramatic, juvenile climax scenes, a character says that such students must be given lessons in the behaviour of the opposite sex so as to enable them to understand the latter’s ways and psyche! (Yes, no joke this). After the film is over, you can be forgiven for thinking that those who have never been to a co-ed institution are spiritually handicapped and psychologically unprepared to face the world full of cunning boys (or psychopathic girls, as the case may be). So, our director explores a ‘fresh’ point which he thinks has so much of sentimental value. It sure has an immense shit value.
Even as we start wondering as to whether there is a story, the climax scenes start unfolding all of a sudden when the hero gets unnaturally emotional on the farewell day. All of a sudden, we discover that it has been full four years since the boy and the girl have been in love but we never feel like their love has seen any evolution. All the years pass without them saying a single emotional line to each other. The hero starts off behaving like a circus monkey, and he is content with his behaviour being labelled as ‘performance’ by the heroine. The monkey in him never dies. In a horrible scene that comes well into the second half of the second half, the monkey matures into a circus clown when he abandons on the middle of a road a shirt gifted to him by a girl he had flirted four years ago, thereby proving that he seriously loves the girl currently present in his life.
When there is no conflict in the story, the writer-director marshals his uncontainable sympathy for those who have never been to a co-ed institution. He takes up their cause and becomes a guiding light in their lives. He wants us to feel their plight and agony. The Chemistry lecturer and a student from the same species unconsciously wade into the Ladies’ toilet because they have never known that a toilet for the fairer sex exists in a co-ed! The story is an extension of his unbridled creativity in service of the cause of the marginalized section (those who have never been to a co-ed, mind it) of our unfair society. So, the heroine has no intellectual wherewithal to understand one basic fact about boys: that they are incorrigible flirts. Her naivety lands her in a pseudo-dilemma, which becomes a dummy conflict point in a non-story.
See, the heroine dislikes to own anything that has already been another’s. Now she discovers that her boy friend for four years was once a flirt. Want to know how they fight? They wear tee shirts reading Pora and Pove respectively! And two or three such juvenile ideas are written to befit the juvenile plot.
Want to know what they did for four years? See, they hardly did anything counts even for its imbecilic worth. Their main concern has been listening to silly lectures, playing pranks with the girl’s ‘bava’, fooling the girl’s brother (a cop) who anyways has no place in the story, so on and so forth. In the worst ever fight conceived in recent Tollywood history, the hero beats up everyone with his Mathematics text book! A fittingly juvenile fight for a child artiste! As if the original ideas that stir us are not enough, there is a parody of that Khushi scene involving Pawan, Bhumika and her father. The interval bang has the cop ‘annayya’ walking up to the love birds. You would think that the brother is the third important character in the story, but the ‘annayya’ only makes a guest appearance later.
When a boy is in love, you expect him to have a glowing face. Here the hero (played by Karan) unfailingly maintains that I-am-irked expression on his face in the presence of almost everyone, including the heroine. But when he is smiling, there are good chances of a horrible song playing out.
Soumya is the only succour and she too is failed by the make-up artist and the cinematographer.
Verdict: There is a scene where TV serials are ridiculed. Well, it was like pot calling the kettle black.
Rating: 1/5
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