Ispade Rajavum Idhaya Raniyum Review: Nearly well done!

Ranjit Jeyakodi has taken a familiar route and has tried to portray it in a rugged manner.

Ispade Rajavum Idhaya Raniyum is a raw love story. Quite raw that there are no sugar coats. And it truly depends solely on the lead pair.

Both the hero and heroine have their equal share of weight in the screenplay and that’s quite needed for a movie of this kind.

It deals with the issues in a relationship in a raw manner that any youngster lover boy and girl of today’s generation can relate to.

Can the family audience relate? I don’t think so. But even the matured couple, or the married ones can enjoy the movie without their kids!

Screenplay

The movie has a somewhat strange screenplay that gives us a mixed feel.

We are not able to tell whether the movie is good or not. It is good in parts and ends up repetitive and predictable in parts.

Especially in the second half, the screenplay tests your patience a lot. Not only does the pace slows down a lot compared to the first half, but the movie gets a lot conversational.

While lengthy dialogues are necessary to convey the emotions behind this raw love relationship, a little more of cut shorting could have helped.

The first half, on the other hand, is well paced and breezy. And it really helps building up the characters well.

Acting by cast

Harish has given his best in pulling off a totally different kind of role that he has not yet done.

So far he has been only seen as a lover boy. In IRIR he has transformed into a lover man.

The character requires a manly portrayal because the hero is a rugged guy with anger management issues.

And Harish has done his best in emotions and body language.

Shilpa is definitely a talented actress. Even though in the trailer, we had a feeling that she looks more matured than Harish to make a pair, she truly pulls off her role in style.

Her acting as Tara is classy and perfect.

Ma Ka Pa Anand and Balasaravanan play Gautam’s friends and they do their job quite well.

The Plot

Gautham (Harish) is a short tempered guy. His anger management issues are attributed to his not-so-good childhood.

His mother left his father due to a failed relationship and she marries someone else. Since Gautham doesn’t get to feel mother’s love and attention, this affects his personality a lot.

On the other side of the spectrum we have Tara (Shilpa Manjunath), a matured and independent girl who has her own perspectives for matters.

They both meet up at strange situations and slowly start to have feelings for each other.

What starts off as a passionate love affair gets ruined by the obsessiveness and possessiveness of Gautham.

Even though Tara tries her best to make the relationship work, she finally has to let go and decide to marry the guy whom her parents fixed for her.

How the couple go through the good and tough times and whether they unite forms the rest of the story.

Though the storyline is quite thin, and there’s nothing new to offer, the package looks pretty convincing.

Technicals

Sam CS’s music is one of the biggest pluses for the movie. Both in BGM and as well as in the songs, the music has worked out really well.

Cinematography by Kavin Raj is another plus to the movie. The color palettes are well used to convey the mood of the scenes.

The shots are perfectly planned and executed.

Editing is on point in the first half. But the second half is a lot draggy. However, the editor couldn’t help this because it is probably the director’s requirement!

Final Verdict

Though the movie is not for the generic audience, the target audience will have a good time enjoying the narration and relating to it.

At the same time, there are cultural issues scattered throughout the movie. Like portraying the hero as a violent character, and making the heroine fall for him based on that violence is one example.

Portraying love failure is OK if the couple has had sexual contact. And portraying drugs to be the point of comfort for guys in love failure and other examples.

Furthermore, Gautham is shown as an youngster with no life goals except roaming in a bike, hanging out with friends, displaying anger and be obsessive about a girl.

Given that the target audience is youngsters (who might still not have clear differentiating thoughts about stuff in life) this can be misleading.

Overall, Ispade Rajavum Idhaya Raniyum is a genuine attempt to present a raw love story in the rawest form.

The second half gets really dark and intense in terms of emotions and tests our patience.

Every small and big emotions are captured well and are delivered well so the target audience can very well relate to them.

Had the second half been crispier and to the point, the movie would have scored really well!