Train travel might fetch you love

Pyaarge Agbitaithe
Kannada (U/A) ¬¬
Director: Khavin Bala
Cast: Komal Kumar, Prarthana and others

Komal is back with another remake and this time it is Marathi film Mumbai Pune Mumbai. The storyline was simple and natural, with little scope for dramatics associated with cinema for long. Komal and his team faithfully copies the original but brings in Akul Balaji and Rachna Maurya, unnecessarily.

A tale of two people with opposite outlook towards life, love and society spending time together by chance, Pyaarge Agbitaithe begins on the railway platform like the Radhika Pandit-Dhruv starrer Addhuri and ends there. In between, Mysore city and surrounding areas are captured up close but with weak lighting and ugly use of the lens filters. Natural lighting at the start of monsoon or winter would have sufficed. In between the truncated tour of Mysore, competition hots up between the lead pair.

Initially, it is Komal who tries to hijack the scene from his new co-star, but it is Prarthana who impresses the most. Her expressive face and spunky, yet no-nonsense body language is just right for the character. A good find. Master Anand, Ravindranath, Satyajit and Tennis Krishna had no business to be in the film which is mainly about the give-and-take between two individuals. Likewise, Akul Balaji, whose “acting” in the climax is the icing on top of Irritation Cake!

For, unlike Prarthana, Komal relapses into what comes easy to him — comedy. But spoofing others can amuse only so far. Like the heroine in the initial scenes, the audience struggles to pull the mouth corners up; cringing comes easily and quickly. It is time Komal brought back performance to the table.

One of Dharma Teja’s songs is melodious but gets lost amidst Komal’s contrived goofiness. Pyaarge Agbitaithe sucks dry all pyaar for films with its lacklustre presentation. A pity!