Kerintha set in the background of a college, a gang of friends with diverse characters are the pivot. The story begins with Jai (Sumanth Ashwin), Bhavana (Sukeerthi), Sid (Vishwanath), Priya (Tejaswi) & Nookaraju (Parvatheesham). They join in Masters in the same college, but in no time they become good friends. Soon Nookaraju – Bhavana and Sid – Priya make a pair. Meanwhile, Jai falls in love with Jr. Doctor Manaswini (Sri Divya). To complicate things, Nookaraju also falls in love with Shalini (college senior), He struggles with his career, Sid can’t clear his issues with Priya and Jai starts getting closer to Tanisha (Nithya Naresh). It leads to fun filled moments besides hatred, jealousy and emotional moments in their lives. Ultimately, do lovers join or not forms the rest of the storyline.
Sumanth Ashwin does the role of the protagonist in his usual style and there is not much to test his acting chops. Sri Divya, who stole many hearts with her promising performance in the Tamil hit Kaaki Settai, has surprisingly insignificant role where all she has to do is just to look pretty. Tejaswini Madivada gets some nice moments and she looks very cute in her role. But her characterization seems to have been half baked. All the new kids have done well. Parvatheesham as Nookaraju walks away with all honours. As an innocent Srikakulam lad, he is an apt cast. Vishwanath and Sukeerthi have come up with nice performances. Pragathi, Anitha Chowdary and supporting cast have all performed their roles well.
The story penned by Sai Kiran Adivi is simple and runs on the same lines of few youthful entertainers. The storyline lacks much novelty but the way it has been executed pep things up . At and around two hour and twenty five minutes the film seems like a never ending saga and this could have been a major let down here. In the absence of solid script (written by SVC team) to bank on, the film struggles to a great extent. With a script that is too pretentious, the film has a shaky start and the first half is quite tedious. Now the greatest problem with this kind of inspired stuff is that most of the viewers will be aware about upcoming storyline in the first thirty minutes. This raises the obvious question on why a film needs to be inspired so heavily, when the DVD’s of original (Happy Days, Paathshala & 3 Idiots) content is easily available in the market. Here’s the answer could be the market for titillation and that is exactly what the makers of this film are eyeballing as well. Still I don’t get the point about 3 years of making and 2 years of auditioning for new actors, when they were planning to come up with a conventional line with budding actors in lead. Plus, the screenplay never really takes the audience along with its flow and looks fractured with cooked up situations, boring monologues, forced comedy and dramatic scenes in the absence of feel good script.
There are some basic aspects that lack logic as well, like a post graduate fails to find an appropriate card to propose his love, as he fails to read English on the card. Seriously. Director failed to showcase main point whether the youngsters reach their goals in the final. What was Nookaraju’s Goal in the end? Pragathi – Vishwanath’s airport scene is very silly, and visibly angry Viswanath tries to convince his mother by not telling about his pain and pressure in his life. Instead of working on these things director wastes his time on untimely marriage.
The music by Mickey J Meyer is peppy and cheerful but unfortunately, the placement of the songs leaves much to desired. Mila Mila and Thanks 2 Zindagi are well composed, foot tapping numbers. Cinematography by Vijay K Chakravarthy is good in the song sequences, With almost the whole movie shot in the campus, the credit goes to the camera for giving audience a fresh look through out. The editing of the film leaves a lot to desired and the film could do trimming to make its progress faster. Dialogues by Abburi Ravi are okay in parts. Production Values of Sri Venkateswara Creations are appropriate.
Friday can work in parts for all those who are not familiar watching movies in this pattern used in films like Happy Days, Paathshala, 3 Idiots and Life is Beautiful. But for all those who are familiar with this style of filmmaking, this looks amateurish and pretentious. All in all, There is nothing much that you haven’t seen before, in Kerintha. Now, if you are fine about it, this film could work for you!
