Director Elan’s Pyaar Prema Kalyanam could be termed a spiritual sequel to his first film Pyaar Prema Kadhal, a detail the director will not allow you to forget. At the core of it, they’re both films about the chaos that erupts when the families of a couple, decide to force their opinions onto their children. Both of these films also try to analyse a fairly modern (or seemingly progressive) relationship status from a distance, banking on the comedy that erupts when their orthodox family members try to come to terms with it. Pyaar Prema Kadhal, which released in 2018, did this with a couple that decides to enter into a live-in relationship, that too when one of their families live just one street away from them. In Pyaar Prema Kalyanam, Elan takes it one step ahead; the couple here are sure about getting married, but the groom must leave behind his home to move in with the bride and her family.
Despite their individual flaws, it was easy to fall in love with both Sree (Harish Kalyan) and Sindhuja (Raiza) from Pyaar Prema Kadhal as they began to fall in love with each other.
But that’s not quite the case with Chinnu (Elan) and Ammu (Saanve Meghana) in this film. Chinnu, for example, is someone you are supposed to find annoying for his loserly ways, the manner in which he’s happy doing nothing, as long as his family foots his bills.
But that’s been the core quality of a lot of protagonists in films we’ve loved, hasn’t it? Even so there’s something ridiculously grating about the way he behaves during his first meeting with Ammu. There’s a case of mistaken identity and Chinnu reluctantly drinks coffee with another girl he obviously finds unattractive. The film wants this scene to be a bit of exposition on how he’s a red flag, but they push this character to say and do so much that he becomes somewhat irredeemable.
But it’s not just about what we think of Chinnu at this point. The person most alarmed by his red flag status is Ammu herself, sneaking in a phone camera to shoot his obviously misogynist ways. Being an influencer, she uploads the video of his obnoxiousness and even benefits from it.
And then you get a scene just ten minutes later which contradicts this. As aware as Ammu is about this dude’s real attitude, she's incredibly easily convinced of his good heart. In a proposal scene that follows, we are expected to feel something for the both of them falling in love this abruptly. Instead, you catch yourself blaming Ammu for deciding to be with such a guy, unwilling to buy into the reasons the film presents about his genuine love for her. For us to care for this couple, shouldn’t they first care about themselves?
You feel like keeping a similar distance from the other characters that make up Ammu and Chinnu’s larger circle. Questions about caste and dowry are thrown around casually to plant these characters as real, flawed people, but in an overstuffed film that’s already trying to say a lot, their redemption arcs are simply thrown at us in the form of one shot or one long dialogue that spells out how they’ve changed. In a better film, we would have felt their evolution as they experience people close to them changing.
I blame this too on the film’s need to say everything, without getting around to saying enough. Not only does it want the case for a reversal in traditional gender roles to make a point, but it tries to be relentlessly funny by repeating every cliche in the mother-in-law versus daughter-in-law handbook, just by making Chinnu go through all that a woman would have had to. These subversions aren’t clever or inventive and only reinforces things that are already wrong in our family setup.
And then you have the rapid pacing. There’s no breathing room between scenes, nor are these moments where you feel a character’s interiority. Scenes are cut like Reels and at times, the larger plot plot is compromised for one joke to land. This is most obvious in the case of the Yogi Babu charcater. The film writes several inane jokes around him and his wife and how she would do almost anything for him. But then the jokes dry up, and when it’s time for the film to get preachy, he suddenly becomes a caring husband who’s aware of his flaws.
It’s not that Pyaar Prema Kalyanam doesn’t have it’s heart in it’s right place. In fact there are quite a few pressing questions the film brings up in strangely relatable ways. But in its rush to play it safe, while also trying to check all the right boxes, we feel stuck in a tiring game of tug-of-war between people we never feel at home with.