Oru Modhal Oru Kadhal (2014)

Karthik is an aspiring director and the second son of a highly respected doctor. He is in a relationship with Subha, his college mate. He also has a gang of good-for-nothing friends. Under pressure from her parents, Subha breaks up with Karthik, which leaves him heartbroken. While he is moping around, he gets an offer to work as a trainee lecturer at a media research centre in Bangalore. There, he brightens up after seeing that his class includes a bunch of "hawt" girls with model looks. He also falls in love with one of them, Anusha, who, too, flirts with him. A year later, he goes to meet Anusha in Delhi for a project and the two realize that they are in love. They break the news to Anusha's Punjabi family who are only too eager to fix up the match. So, too, are Karthik's parents, and so the tale ends in a picture perfect wedding. Having titled the film as Oru Modhal Oru Kadhal, director Keerthi Kumar splits his movie into two parts — the one before the interval (the "modhal" from the title) involves Karthik's failed affair with Subha, while the post-interval segment (the "kadhal") narrates his real love story with Anusha. While this approach seems interesting on paper, it doesn't translate into an engaging film on screen. The first episode takes up too much time and so, by the time the actual love story starts, we are weary. And, the Karthik-Anusha romance is developed hastily and unpersuasively that we do not really care for them to get together. There is also an attempt to do a 2 States in the concluding scenes — a Punjabi family and a Tamil family coming together because of a wedding — but this is done in a halfhearted manner that there is no real crisis for us to really invest ourselves. The film often has the feel of an amateur effort, its humour is corny, the plot is weak, and the acting by the lead pair is strictly functional (Vivek keeps smiling while Megha is all at sea). And, yet, despite all these flaws, it manages to leave you with a smile by the time it ends. We indulgently laugh at the silliest of jokes as we realize that this is a modest film with modest ambitions. After all, a mildly amusing film is preferable to a dull one.