Meghamala - O Pellam Gola Review

Let's face it - nobody likes to be sold off to an Arab Sheikh. Even if he's come by flight, and is there only for two days. Meghamala is a girl who is in this very situation when she luckily lands in the home of Sanjay, a bachelor leading a unanimous existence (or whatever the word for staying alone is). She starts to like him, since they are so unlike each other - she's flippant while he's grouchy, she smokes while he's pious, she's into pop while he's into devotional, and she can act while he can't.

It's not hard to see how the film unfolds, right? Actually, it is. Very. Meghamala should ideally have been a good tale - it's normally hard to screw up anything that involves a girl and a boy getting stuck into staying together. However, the crew of this one don't know that, and so screw it up. Unfortunately, they don't even keep it a secret - it's there for everybody to see.

Anyway, Sanjay (Santosh Pavan) wants Meghamala (Tanu Roy) out of his house, but cannot tell her directly since she'll misunderstand it to be asking her out, when he's in fact asking her out. Especially since she's already hinted to him that she's interested in him - for example, she's told him that she's willing to take her clothes off, get into bed with him, and have wild, raunchy sex with him. There can be few alternate ways to interpret that sentence.

Unfortunately for Meghamala, Sanjay is already in love with Madhuri, a singer that the recording studio he works for has introduced. And unfortunately for Sanjay, Suresh, his boss, is also in love with Madhuri. And unfortunately for Suresh, Madhuri is in love with Sanjay. And fortunately for you, it's highly unlikely any of these will be in any movie ever again. Including in the sequel to this film (har har!!!).

The film progresses showing several moments in the lives of Sanjay and Meghamala as they masquerade as husband and wife to keep the neighbours' speculation at bay. If you've seen the original Missamma (NTR/Savitri), you'll know that this thing can be very cute indeed - just clever conceptualizations of the individual moments in this overall theme. Only, the makers of this one need to be told that they need to look up the word "screenplay", preferably under "s".

The second half of the film gets better, thanks mostly to a serendipitous performance by Tanu Roy. But that's just putting a lost cause on life support. The comedy is risqué, and the photography vacillates between enervated and doggedly resurgent. And let's talk about the music some other day.

Santosh Pavan bleats his way through, and looks and dresses like he'd prefer to be left out of anything life has to offer. He does have a certain well-defined set of emotions, and we quickly counted them. Still, he and the person playing his boss are mostly fine for their roles, but the girl playing Madhuri looks like she needs glucose quickly. The other performances, mostly comic, are tolerable. The film has an overdose of raunch for its theme, and several dialogues are bleeped out.

This is unlikely to be around for more than a couple of weeks, so you have to be quick to catch it.