Debutante Elrad Kumar produced and directed MUK had its fair share of pre-release buzz and controversies in the form of change of hands from one director to another and the delay in its post-production work as well. What was poised to be a romantic thriller, ended up as a tedious and long winded affair with hardly anything solid to offer.

The story revolves around the lead cast of Atharva and Amala Paul. Both are software engineers, Atharva working in Chennai, while Amala Paul lives in Bangalore. Atharva travels to Bangalore every weekend to be with his girlfriend and at nights he avenges her foes. Meanwhile Amala Paul (with another name) arrives in India from the US and claims that she knows Atharva, while Atharva treats her as an unknown person. Why Atharva does this form the rest of the story and thus bringing in the lame twist in the tale.

The biggest weakness for the movie was its screenplay. To justify the fact that it was meant to be a core love story, way too many songs were thrust into the narration, thus hampering the pace of the movie. Though the director tried his best to hook the audiences with an element of suspense, immediately after the interval the steam is lost and all that happens after that hardly makes any sense.

For Atharva this was considered to be the big ticket for becoming the heartthrob among the youth, but sadly he was not up to the mark and he hardly made any sensible emotions on screen. Though he had a ‘photo shopped’ physique, his acting let him down. Better luck next time!

Amala Paul had a plum role and looked gorgeous on screen, but the screenplay became so weak at a certain point in time that she was made to look like a wasted piece of glossy white paper.

Santhanam’s weakest role by far was in this movie. Though he tried his best to resurrect the movie at times, he was hardly given any screen space and thus his efforts went down the drain.

Jayaprakash, was cast in his favorite supporting role as the psychiatrist, tried his best to do a decent job, but was caricaturised many a times by the below par screenplay.

All others including Nasser and Anupama Kumar had done their roles with finesse. A special mention for Anupama Kumar, who has donned a bold woman’s role and her flash back episode, though a bit long, added some much needed fuel for the weak screenplay.

Music by G.V.Prakash was good, though it cannot be rated in his top league of albums. The placement of songs literally scared the audiences and some were even lazy to go out for a fag as too many of them were thrust within a very short span of time. The BGM was a bit nosiy too.

Editing was a huge disappointment as the movie dragged towards the end and added to the boredom.

Cinematography by Shakthi was eye-catchy, especially the grand foreign locales and the first song on the American highway was amazing.

The movie had good production values in the form of grand foreign locales and costumes, but because of the poor treatment of the script, this certainly goes down as just another failed attempt of a debut director who wanted to make an engaging romantic thriller, but misses the trick with a rehashed and amateurish screenplay which doesn’t cater to any of our senses.

Verdict: Big Bore!

Rating: 1.5/5