It would be unfair to call Oru Adaar Love just a movie. It is Omar Lulu’s detailed study on how internet trends can be misleading and on how one can successfully attract the world’s attention to a mediocre product, with some smart promotional campaigns. We, the viewers, are the guinea pigs in this remarkable experiment, which sheds important light on key issues regarding internet culture, viral content and fame.
- Starring: Priya Prakash Varrier, Roshan Abdul Rahoof, Noorin Shereef
- Direction: Omar Lulu
Omar has over his first two films found his comfortable space in campuses where sexist and racist jokes at the drop of a hat are par for the course. In Adaar Love, he shifts the milieu a little, from college campuses to a school campus. But the behaviour of the students mostly does not. He expects them to behave just like college kids. Among the teachers, the male ones are all buffoons, while the female ones are objectified.
Shots of a youth festival fill the opening credits. While you might expect these images to have something to do with what is to follow, the movie begins with freshers walking into the higher secondary classes. This disjointed, clueless making style is a precursor what is to follow. It is love at first sight and in the first shot for Priya (Priya Prakash Varrier) and Roshan (Roshan Abdul Rahoof). In an attempt to make something out of nothing, a love triangle involving Gadha (Noorin Shereef) is also added. In fact, the sole thought of almost all the students in the film is on how to hook up with someone from the opposite sex.
Right in the opening hour, all those famous sequences which set the internet on fire is done and dusted with. The famous wink comes and goes, recognisable from the other pointless scenes only thanks to the loud cheers from the crowd that accompanied it. Tributes to Kalabhavan Mani and to the fishermen who saved lives during the floods have been included just to draw some applause, since there is no content otherwise worthy of drawing that. But the fisherman character reminds you that this is an Omar Lulu movie by making a sexist comment on his son’s teacher in the very next scene.
Many of the sequences celebrate or even trivialise unacceptable or problematic behaviour, like the scene where Roshan slaps Priya and another where he forcibly kisses her. Students ‘accidentally’ sending lewd content to the school WhatsApp group is also brushed away with a joke. Towards the end of the film, three villains emerge out of nowhere in one last desperate attempt to create a namesake plot. What happens next will blow some brains, literally!
The release of Oru Adaar Love on a Valentine’s day seems to be the handiwork of the culture police, for love hardly ever got such a shabby treatment on screen. If only a wink could save this experiment in mediocrity.
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