Even though Udayananu Thaaram was a hit , we were not very impressed by Roshan Andrews first movie. For starters, it had the original script by Steve Martin's Bowfinger to build upon. Then our brilliant scriptwriter, Srinivasan, who has many original scripts to his credit chose to add the usual Dasan-Vijayan routine to adapt it. The movie had a critical look at the happenings behind the camera and the personal jabs at the eccentricities of the superstars had us laughing since the last time we heard it was in Harikrishnans.
Burdened with the success of Udayananu Tharam, expectations were high from director Rosshan Andrews. This time the script by Bobby and Sanjay was an original one and not "inspired" in Priyadarshan style. There have been movies which have dealt with the teenage adventures of boys, like Sethumadhavan's Venal Kinavukal based on M T Vasudevan Nair's script, but so far we have not seen movies told from the point of view of teenage girls. Roshan has to be commended for picking up a topic which has not been dealt with the seriousness it deserves.
Notebook turns out to be an interesting movie, mainly from the interval to about the point Suresh Gopi makes a guest appearance which is about 45 minutes later. It takes the whole of the first half to reach the first plot point, which is that one of the girls, Sridevi, gets pregnant during a romantic rendezvous during a school picnic. Till then the script writers entertain us with the happenings in a school whose locale looks like one of those 7 Mega Pixel photos on Flickr.
The line in the story would have read "Boy and Girl fall in love", but stretching it to the entire first half was, lets say a stretch. To fill the time, we get to see the kids running around singing couple of songs, which we guess is mandatory in such schools. Such transgressions can be forgiven for these techniques are used by veterans like Sathyan Anthikkad too when the story line is as thin as angel hair pasta.
There is an a lengthy episode involving a student, Feroze, who is interested in music and is expelled from the school for suddenly scoring good grades. Feroze, played by Mejo Joseph who is also Roshan's brother-in-law, disappears somewhere in the middle of the first half never to be seen again and makes a five second appearance in the end as a successful musician. If the incident was to tell us that the school gives importance to academics, then it was redundant as it is obvious in various conversations among students.
To read the full review please visit: http://varnachitram.com/2007/04/25/review-notebook/
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