'Sugarless' review: Bitter tale of a young diabetic

2.5/5

Sugarless

Kannada (Theatres)

Director: KM Shashidhar

Cast: Pruthvi Ambaar, Dharmanna Kadur, Priyanka Thimmesh

‘Sugarless’ is that kind of a film that pique’s your curiosity with its offbeat title. It then deceives you by not doing anything about its potential.

The film is supposed to be about Venkatesh (Pruthvi Ambaar), a 28-year-old who is diagnosed with diabetes. His terrible lifestyle, which majorly involves being a sugar addict, come in passing. Instead of establishing the film’s biggest conflict, director Shashidhar KM is keen on ticking all the boxes of the so called ‘family entertainer’.

So we get a hollow treatment of familiar themes like friendship, career and love. The director tries to coat comedy marked by double entendre on the aimless first-half. In movies made for adults, opting for double meaning dialogues isn’t a cardinal sin. But in ‘Sugarless’, such conversations are written with little imagination. The actors, especially Dharmanna Kadur, somewhat salvage some scenes.

One is reminded of ‘Vicky Donor’, which had solid drama and addressed a taboo topic without compromising on entertainment. ‘Sugarless’ could have dug deep on the stigma associated with the disease instead of trivialising it through comedy.

What’s worse is the film tries to manipulate the audience with its sudden melodrama towards the end. It’s funny how the director tries to recreate Pruthvi’s famous wailing scene of ‘Dia’. That scene worked because the mother-son relationship had enough depth to move us. Here, relationships are treated superficially and the intention to make us feel for them only exposes the fragile nature of the script.

The film ends on a preachy note as a doctor (S Narayan) advises the viewers to lead a healthy life and avoid stress. Even if ‘Sugarless’ had dealt with any other taboo subject the result would have been the same. Because the uninspired writing is the culprit. Diabetes is just an excuse to get some eyeballs.