Maturity is when you hit the same situation in life once again, and have a foreboding sense this time of where it can lead to. Taking the same path that you did the last time is, well, just being human.
Ankit, Pallavi And Friends is a tale of love, break-up and getting back together. You can see the break-up coming for a while, and if it affects you any more than such stuff in a movie used to when you were 15, and sets your mind off into a more elaborate spiral of thoughts than the no-frills script warrants, well, that's some unfortunate maturity, for this is an extraordinarily ordinary script, a mere
Happy Days wannabe. And if you triumphantly support the hero or the heroine for the course they take at that crossroads, maybe you're just being human, too.
Ankit (Nikhil Siddharth), Pallavi (Megha Burman), and Sunil, Raja and Gopi (Venu, Surya/Pingpong and Pradeep) are a bunch of just-out-of-collegers hanging out together, and Ankit woos and lands Pallavi despite him being what the world would call a loser - he's failed in BA, works as a waiter to avoid taking money from his parents, is more idealistic and self-respecting than street-smart, and dreams of making it big as a musician.
Pallavi stands by him despite him simply refusing to mould or even give up smoking for her, but when he blows a great chance to make it big by slapping a music director who's giving him a break, they have the final installment of the Great Argument, and break up.
The first break-up for most persons is nothing like what they thought it would be, since we all grew up watching the movies where it all works out in the end in an inseparable hug between the couple who have all through been pining for each other. Reality features the surprisingly hard-hitting pain of another person in the partner's life, and Ankit realizes this pretty soon when he sees a happy Pallavi at a movie hall with another man. And realizes that she's actually gotten over him, and doesn't even want to run into him. Yes, that hurts.
However, this is a movie, and reality checks and BO numbers don't really go together. So the dream starts unfolding - Ankit becomes a roaring hit as a pop star with a lucky break, Pallavi realizes that she's made mistakes in handling Ankit, there's (whew!) actually no other man, and the friends successfully reunite the two. And so ends another movie that perpetuates the myth among the uninitiated that love can never have a permanently sad ending.
A depthless script is not the only problem with Ankit, Pallavi And Friends, and the script doesn't become depthless merely since it romanticizes romance and plays to the BO - it's genuinely poor writing. The film is firstly more Ankit and Pallavi - the friends part is just an lofty attempt at adding some depth and youth appeal, and not anything inherently part of the core tale. The comedy is not up to the high standards that Telugu audiences are used to in the post-Trivikram dialogue-centric era, small things and the flow (like Raja proposing to a pregnant girl) aren't taken care of, and the performance of the heroine doesn't really enrich the experience.
Nikhil and the other guys are generally good, and the music, while tolerable, is unlikely to rise high since the movie itself will not. And this is a low-budget film, so there's not much in terms of a funky visual feel.
Watch Ankit Pallavi And Friends if you are unable to get over Happy Days, but that's an unethical way to get over it.