Prema Khaidi Review

In a sense, it appears that some Tamil directors have developed a penchant for mixing romantic stories with an element of macabrity and malevolence.  It is true that no one can match the brilliance of Kollywood writers when it comes to writing slice-of-life stories, infusing the film with as much realistic drama as possible and spinning an earth-shattering climax that remains the biggest high point of the movie.  Only the contemporaries seem to have come to believe that giving a violent spin to the story in the climax is good art.  Films like Paruthiveeran and Subramaniapuram (Ananthapuram) fall under this category.  They all believed in shocking the audience in the climax.  Prema Khaidi (Mynaa in Tamil) keeps this tradition alive.

The story begins with Suri (Vidharth) narrating how he met Mynaa (Amala Paul) during his childhood.  A school drop-out, Suri never cared two hoots for education.  Feeding his drunkard father and mother, the boy leads the nondescript life of an illiterate.  On a day, he happens to find Mynaa and her mother orphaned on the roads, now shelter less owing to penury and poverty.  He provides them with help from an old woman, joins Mynaa in a school.  As expected, the friendship of Mynaa and Suri blossoms into love.

Suri, now an adult, is enraged when he finds Mynaa's mother (Poovitha, she perfectly fits the bill) protests their love.  What is a Tamil hero who doesn't beat up any and everyone that opposes his love?  Suri thrashes Mynaa's mother, his mother and father.

He finds himself in the jail for attempted murder and remanded for a period of 15 days.  But he escapes from the jail even before he completes the term when he comes to know that Mynaa is forcibly being married to a Dubai groom by her mother, to stop it from happening.  It is now when Inspector Bhaskar (Sethu) and constable Ramaiah (Thambi Ramaiah) embark on a hunt for the missing Suri.

After finding their way through the forest et al, Bhaskar and Ramaiah finally nab Suri but this time Mynaa clutches herself to Suri after loudly declaring to her mother that she will not marry anyone except Suri.  The film now becomes a road story where the four characters begin to bond in surprising ways.

Prema Khaidi is cleverly written; the screenplay is quite intelligent.  It is about how quirks of fate and vagaries of life crush us humans.  Men have got their plans and destiny its own. Good-hearted characters meet with the most cruel finale.  Though there are no villains in the piece, all are defeated at the end.  When life is the nemesis, do we need villains?
 
The film is watchable for its realistic sequences, appropriate dialogues, oddball comedy and the performances of all the leads (Vidharth, Mynaa and not to forget Thambi and Senthu).  This is a love story where there are no obstacles in the path of the lovers; only life has other plans.
 
Do not expect to enjoy the film's romance.  Because at the end, you will be disappointed if you go with preconceptions.  Go for the movie if you can bear to watch tensed moments and even more unkind climax.  Whether you like tragedies or not, you will like the way Prabhu Solomon sketches his characters and weaves an edge-of-the-seat screenplay.  
 
This is not a film where you will want to talk about action or comedy, but the cruel play of life.

Released on: 26th Aug, 2011