Appearing laboured and disconnected, and carrying very little intrigue, ‘Love Action Drama’ is a perfect example of what could be termed as fluff entertainment. There is barely a silent moment in this almost two and a half hour long sight and sound blast, and all you keep wishing for amidst all the cacophony is that it had a sound story to tell as well.
Dhyan Sreenivasan’s ‘Love Action Drama’ has dilapidated doses of all the three components in its title. Running markedly low in love, action and drama it’s a misguided rom-com that has little to applaud for, and even lesser to root for.
Dinesh and Shobha happen to be household names for the Malayalam film viewer, especially when they are tagged together as a couple, and it would be nothing less than a shame to flagrantly adapt them for a film that has absolutely no idea what its talking about. And yet, that is exactly what ‘LAD’ does.
In fact the first hour of ‘Love Action Drama’ seems like an extended booze session with a camera idly occupying a corner and letting its protagonist Dinesh (Nivin Pauly) and his crony Sagar (Aju Varghese) blabber away to glory. We do get a fair idea about Dinesh – the man who occupies the focal point of this story, which is that he is an insanely rich fellow, who has done nothing much with his life except squander away his dad’s wealth and cut a sorry figure before the world.
In walks Sobha (Nayantara) whom he gets to meet at a cousin’s wedding, and before you know it, they are in love. Or at least in what they believe to be what love is all about. Sobha keeps reprimanding him for his addiction to alcohol, and he keeps promising to mend his ways, but there seems to be no transformation in sight, much to Sobha’s chagrin.
It’s amazing how ‘Love Action Drama’ runs this long, with hardly anything to brag about. It does remind you of how talent as the one that it has in store could be squandered away and of how storytelling itself takes a back seat, when the premise suffers from a severe lack of compelling elements.
The notions of love that the film purports are cringeworthy, and you do wonder if this is how things are gonna be, hereafter. Quite a scary thought, but the fact that not every young man whom you get to meet in the real world is a thoroughly disoriented cracker like Dinesh and a clueless entrepreneur like Sobha is the only thing that gives you hope.
Sobha is quite weird herself especially when it comes to her choices in life, and you feel like the only sensible one around in this disarray is her dad (Sreenivasan) who asks her what it is that she sees in the guy. This is also the most sensible question in the entire film, and when Sobha assures him that all will be well, he dejectedly walks away, hoping that she would see sense, just as the rest of us before the screen, who had long given up on this lowbrow romance, and who had instead got busy tugging up the last kernel of popcorn that refuses to let go of the bucket.
What a jumbo cast this film has come up with, and it doesn’t get any better with Nivin Pauly and Nayantara leading the pack, and with a host of other actors occupying the fringes of the scene. But they are left with nothing but a series of disjointed sequences that try their best to hold themselves together, but which keep dropping down all over the place. There is even a cameo by Vineeth Sreenivasan that makes you realize what unconditional sibling love is all about.
Appearing laboured and disconnected, and carrying very little intrigue, ‘Love Action Drama’ is a perfect example of what could be termed as fluff entertainment. There is barely a silent moment in this almost two and a half hour long sight and sound blast, and all you keep wishing for amidst all the cacophony is that it had a sound story to tell as well.
Verdict: Average