'Ninaithale Inikkum' lacks flair (Tamil Film Review)

Film: 'Ninaithale Inikkum'; Cast: Prithviraj, Priyamani, Sakthi, Anuja Iyer, Karthik, Bhagyaraj, Jeeva; Director: G.N. Kumaravelan; Producer: Gemini Film Circuit, Sun Pictures; Music Director: Vijay Antony; Cinematographer: Balasubramaniam; Ratings: **

'Ninaithale Innikkum', a remake of recent Malayalam hit 'Classmates', was touted to be a campus movie loaded with lot of fun. Unfortunately, it not only fails to recreate the same magic, the movie was far from being impressive.

The story goes like this - Siva (Prithviraj) returns to attend his college reunion. He beats up Vasu (Karthik Kumar) for misbehaving with a girl and his friend Sakthi (Ajmal) supports him. Jealous of Siva's popularity, Vasu is on a prowl and looking for an opportunity to take revenge.

Meera (Priyamani), daughter of local MLA who studies in the same college and falls in love with Shiva after he saved her from a police lathicharge, provides him that chance.

Vasu convinces Meera to contest against Shiva in the college's union elections. This affects their relationship. After a sequence of unfourtunate events during the election, Siva packs his bags and leaves Mumbai without informing anyone.

The problem with the movie is that almost everything is predictable and most of the incidents are packed in a dull manner. Even the romance between the lead pair isn't executed with zest.

The beginning seems interesting, but it fails to live up to the expectation. If the first half stutters and staggers, latter half too fails to impress despite some interesting twists and turns.

While the director has handled the flashback technique well to make the narrative interesting in the second half, it has proved to be inadequate to save the movie.

One fails to understand why the political overtones of 'Classmates' are mysteriously missing from the Tamil version.

Music composer Vijay Anthony and cinematographer Balasubramaniam deserve complements for their work. While the former has come up with some delectable tunes, the latter has captured them well.

Prithviraj, Priyamani and Sakthi play their respective parts well.

Despite good story 'Ninaithale Inikkum' fails because it's executed in a dull manner.