Mudhal Nee Mudivn Nee' review: Coming-of-age drama with no thrills

2.5/5

‘Mudhal Nee Mudivum Nee’ tries to ride the nostalgia wave but director Darbuka Siva makes this Tamil film a lifeless experience for the audience.

The excitement and fear of watching A-rated and pornographic content behind closed doors are one of the most relatable memories for millennials. Thiagarajan Kumararaja wrote a hilarious scene in ‘Super Deluxe’ (2019) to convey the idea. Darbuka Siva, in contrast, shoots a similar scene with zero creativity.

This is the film’s biggest problem. It’s as though the director made a list of elements that defined the 90s era and felt compelled to show everything while forgetting to make memorable moments out of them. So the high-school friendship, audio cassettes, walkman, Ilayaraja, infatuation, childhood love are there as standalone features, without making an impact on our minds.

Vinoth (Kishen Das) and Rekha (Meetha Raghunath), studying 11th standard, are a couple. Darbuka Siva is undecided between showing them merely as cute childhood sweethearts and two vulnerable adults trying to build a strong bond.

The reason for their break-up exposes lazy writing, as opposed to how Gautam Menon convincingly shows the same problem in ‘Nee Thane En Ponvasantham’ (2012). The farewell party plays out dully when compared to the terrific Rockaankuthu sequence in ‘Premam’ (2015). The film is too simplistic.

Several years later, the friends meet in reunion and Darbuka Siva tries to show the realities of adults in an unbelievably long and boring sequence. This is where the film had to burst with energy. The coming-of-age films are out there in plenty. The above-mentioned films have set the bar very high. A comparison with them is inevitable.

Kishen Das’s sincere performance is the only consolation. Watch it if childhood nostalgia is your favourite genre but keep your expectations in check.