Ekk Deewana Tha

Rating : 2/10
Release Date : 17th February, 2012
Time : 140 minutes
Director & Writer : Gautham Menon; Music : A R Rahman
Starring : Prateik, Amy Jackson, Babu Anthony, Manu Rishi, Sachin Khedekar

A Hindi remake of Gautham Menon’s Tamil film Vinnaithandi Varuvaayaa

There was a joke in the film about Amitabh Bachchan and Mohanlal. I found that funny.

There was a conversation between father and son towards the middle, with the father, Sachin Khedekar, coming across as quite chilled out despite being a ‘Maharashtrian Brahmin’. I found that interesting.

I found the rest of the film excruciatingly painful. Flawed in terms of its storyline, the characters, the dialogues and I even found issue with the make-up…

The film is about a young boy, falling in love with his ‘neighbour’. His landlords daughter, actually, who lives upstairs. Courting her essentially by stalking her. And trying to convince her to love him back by blurting his feelings for her at the drop of a hat. He doesn’t seem to believe in things like becoming friends first. Events that unfold are much in the same vein and he even finds a willing accomplice in his mentor, a cameraman, played by Manu Rishi.

Because of the stalker hero, in the entire first half we’re treated to the sight of Amy walking either towards the camera or away from it multiple times. Sometimes, for variety, while walking away she looks back. Sometimes she just walks straight on. And they vary her clothes too, to establish that she looks good in all sorts of dresses including jeans, salwar kameez and sarees.

In a film like this, based on improbable and implausible love, what is necessary is a lead pair so charming they make you forget the flaws in the story. A boy who endears himself as a lovable rogue. A woman who bedazzles so much that we are blinded to everything else around them. Both, Prateik (was that strawberry lipstick he wore during the film ?) and Amy (who's skin colour varied from shot to shot), fall way short of the mark here.
Manu and Sachin, in fact, were the only two who came away with any credit for acting.

Locales are nice, music is nice but cannot rise above the film. Its also not converted fully into a North Indian / Hindi film, retaining a distinctly South Indian flavour & sensibility that also doesn’t work.

Love, they say, is a many splendoured thing, alive with all the colours of the rainbow. The love shown here was anything but. Plodding, indecisive, monochromatic. Instead of inspiring you to greater heights, it only made you do silly things. Unfortunately this is one remake which didn’t work at all…