‘Oru Adaar Love’ and the love potion that it lays out on a platter, comes as no surprise to someone who has watched the director’s earlier films. Missing the mark by a mile, this adaar love tale and the wink that never made it beyond the teaser, would fall nowhere under the radar of fine cinema, or some fine entertainment for that matter.
‘Oru Adaar Love’ is actually a phenomenon; an occurrence that follows a teaser trailer of your film catching national attention and a song of yours being dragged to the court on charges of having wounded religious sentiments. You realise that your film is the talk of the town and the country in this case, that the wink has got much more than it bargained for, and also realise that the film as it is, needs to be tweaked to live up to the monumental expectations that it has raised overnight.
It is probably here that director Omar Lulu flounders, and given the fact that a sturdy narrative has never been one of his strong points, this is hardly surprising. ‘Oru Adaar Love’ is a further extension of his previous films, or at least an extension of the vagrant ideas and mediocrity that had made them up, especially with regard to love.
The action in ‘Oru Adaar Love’ shifts to a school this time around, and it does not take long for us to realise that the Don Bosco School is not much different from the engineering colleges that we got to see in Lulu’s earlier films. Suffice it to say, that here is a bunch of boys and girls, who thanks to the writer, have got their love lives, or at least what seem like it, terribly muddled up.
I wouldn’t even go into those numerous questions that poke at the credibility of the whole scenario, since ‘Oru Adaar Love’ is certainly not a film that warrants it. It’s plain, unambiguous knowledge that the film does not have any intention whatsoever, not even by the longest shot, to make people actually believe what it portrays on screen.
No prizes for guessing that there is Priya (Priya Warrier), Roshan (Roshan Abdul Rahoof) and Gadha (Noorin Shareef), who together cook up a romantic tale in this wannabe-adaar cinematic piece. You could call it a triangular romance, but with almost all of them clueless as to what they want from love, or their lives for that matter, it’s no wonder that the film has only a wink to bank on.
This is a weird world for sure, and one where adolescents have pretty much everything else on their minds except perhaps, studies, a career or a life ahead. That is no surprise, and we have all been through it, but probably we have never been as obsessed with love, or perhaps notions that are mistaken for love, as these kids have so apparently been.
The woman is objectified as in other films of the director, and it gets no better or any worse in ‘Oru Adaar Love’. There are instances of allegiances being struck and broken, and in a scenario where your entire world and every living day revolves around pataoing a girl, or any girl for that matter, these don’t come as a surprise at all.
The comic streak that runs throughout gets a bit desperate at times, and there is nothing much to be said about teachers who appear abnormally moronic or students who appear oddly super-sharp – a flair that is of course utilised for all the wrong purposes. As for the laughter that is pretty sparse, and the situations that lead to it, the less said the better.
Coming to the wink, and the one behind it, Priya Warrier at best does an okay job, while Noorin Shareef, literally walks away with whatever little honour that the film has on offer. Noorin is also the one face that you would remember after the show, though it has to be granted to Roshan that he too does pretty fine playing the leading man.
‘Oru Adaar Love’ and the love potion that it lays out on a platter, comes as no surprise to someone who has watched the director’s earlier films. Missing the mark by a mile, this adaar love tale and the wink that never made it beyond the teaser, would fall nowhere under the radar of fine cinema, or some fine entertainment for that matter.
Verdict: Disappointing