Yem Pillo Yem Pillado Review

With these kinds of movies, you don't wonder if the fresh-out-of-college couple isn't bothered about careers or financial planning or anything of the sort before getting hitched in such hot-blooded hurry. You just keep rooting for all the love in the air.

Em Pillo Em Pillado is a teenagish love story at first, but shows surprising signs of growing up as it moves on. It begins with Bhadram (Pranitha) and Ram (Tanish) at loggerheads with each other in an excruciatingly school-kiddish way; with the kind of leg-pulling that can only mean love when you put yourself on a Freudian thought plane.

So Bhadram and Ram fall for each other, but they soon discover a snag in their story - that Bhadram's father (Charan Raj) is baying for Ram's father's (Ahuti Prasad) blood and vice versa, thanks to a family feud they had a generation ago. It is now upto Ram to trick his way into all the muck and have everyone come out of it smelling fresh and blessing the couple.

The movie uses a formula that is innovative only if you have never watched a Telugu movie in all your life, but manages to stay engaging for the most part. The initial juvenile antics of the couple jar the senses, sometimes reminding you of those college romances of the early years of this decade.

Once the drama starts building up, it's almost funny to see the makers stick to a stereotyped story, and yet, you're kept interested. A lot of the credit goes to the acting jobs by the dads in question here - Charan Raj and Ahuti Prasad. The roles are obviously a cakewalk for them, and the actors are as smooth as ever.

Then, there's the comedy, that keeps buttressing the script. It's not entirely innovative, but is enough to keep you chuckling - and enough even to elicit that polite smile in appreciation of the occasional good joke.

Where the film goes wrong is obviously in its insistence in not swerving from the beaten path one bit, and the way it numbs you into not eve feeling curious about what happens next. There's a bit of violence as well, and a couple of gory scenes slipped in when you're least expecting them might have you swearing to yourself for a while.

Tanish is lively and clued in to the whole "mass hero" bit, but these are his early days in filmdom, yet. He has screen presence to fuel the proceedings, though. The heroine, however, is not just a victim of awry lip-sync, but also a compromise in the acting department.

Manisarma goes along with the tone of the flick and sticks to churning out formula. Still, some fun songs are in store for faithfuls of Telugu film music. The visuals are pretty run-of-the-mill, but fresh all the same.

If you aren't too old, or haven't yet lost it for teenage love, or are not exactly craving for intellectual cinema this week, Em Pillo Em Pillado might turn out to be an easy jaunt after all.