JOIN US143 (Noorunalavathmuru)
Kannada (U/A) ¬¬
Cast: Chandrakanth,Kavitha Bist
Director: Chandrakanth
Creative, but convoluted; inspirational, yet insipid. 143 (Noorunalavathmuru) is a film whose sizzling script fails to engage or enliven. It’s a cocktail more banal than brilliant.
Director Chandrakanth has a finger in every pie — direction, screenplay, story, lyrics, dialogues, production and acting — turning 143 into a one-man show. What could have been a nifty film, teases one’s attention span. Adding to one’s discomfiture are bawdy dialogues that do the film in.
Set in native Chitradurga, the local lingo, a mixture of Kannada and Urdu, jars on one’s ears. If not for Rajashekar’s stylised cinematography and Vinu Manasu’s lilting score — the only bright spots other than the cleverly designed set, where all action takes place in a closed garage — the film would have been a torture.
Having been spurned 142 times in love, a disconsolate Seenu sees in Ahima/Bhudi, the damsel of his dreams. She barges into his ramshackle garage since it is curfew outside.
How the cupid caper shapes up into battle of wits and wisecracks, and bawdy bantering between the beau and the beauty, forms the pivot of 143. Will it be a new dawn for our devdas or is there a twist in the tale? Given its pulsating plotline, ingenuity in cinematic craft, 143 could have been cracker of cinema, but pitifully falls short, leaving one with mixed feelings.