Genre: Drama
Director: Narayan Ragavendra Rao
Cast: Aari, Subha, ‘Panch’ Subbu, R. S. Sivaji, Balaji, Tejaswini, Sekar
Storyline: A real-time play out of events at a coffee shop over nearly two hours on a rainy evening. A married couple fight over the lack of romance in their lives, while it blossoms between two strangers just a table away.
What works: Cinematographer Gopi Amarnath puts up the only professional effort in an otherwise amateur creation.
Some of the actors – Balaji, Tejaswini and Subbu – put up a brave front in what looks like a series of skits stitched together. Aari looks the part of a disillusioned assistant director trying to make a breakthrough in the film industry but is let down by the script and the dialogues.
What does not work: Everything else, starting with the script, the direction, the over dramatic music score and some seriously juvenile acting. It is disheartening to use the same yardstick to review a small budget, independent cinema as one would other big budget movies from established crew and cast. But MPM is proof that cinema starts and ends with writing; any effort that does not pay attention to writing falls flat from the very first scene. The film fails to hook the audience for a single moment.
Bottomline: Painfully boring script makes the running time of close to two hours feel like an entire day at the cinema.
