‘Miss You’ movie review: Siddharth, Aashika Ranganath’s romance drama is a fanciful, forgettable affair

“If you gradually stop loving me, I will also gradually stop loving you. If suddenly you forget me, do not look for me, because I will have already forgotten you,” is an emotional poem in ‘If You Forget Me’ by Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. N Rajasekhar’s romance drama I am missing you Claiming to be full of inspirations from Neruda; The poet inspires the protagonist, a filmmaker, to write the story, and even the trailer cut shows the film’s story being inspired by Neruda’s poetry. From this information and title, you might naturally expect a poignant exploration of love, falling out of love, loss, longing and the fear of being forgotten, but I am missing you There is anything other than that. Starring Siddharth and Aashika Ranganath as a mismatched couple, I am missing you There’s a predictable two-hour episode that goes after the low-hanging fruits and delivers forgettable returns.

In I am missing youVasudevan (Siddharth), an aspiring film producer, becomes the target of a powerful minister, resulting in a horrific car accident that causes him to lose his memory. Vasu forgets everything that has happened in his life in the last 2 years, and how the story drips information to fill this void is the biggest highlight of Rajasekhar’s story.

During a chance visit to Bengaluru, Vasu meets Subbulakshmi aka Subbu (Aashika) and is immediately attracted to Subbu’s rebellious nature (she fights for the pro-hijab cause, and we hear a song that is ‘Mehruba’, but Mohit is fascinated, but he is not a Muslim; an ironic cop) -out for a film that talks about rebellion). Vasu’s attempts to woo her range from creepy to scary, but we’re expected not to judge him as she doesn’t pay any attention to his antics, and it turns out – drum roll – that she’s into someone like that. The person is after someone whom he has forgotten but is subconsciously fascinated by. What happened between Vasu and Subbu, whether Vasu figures it out, and whether the pair reunite forms the rest of the story.

Memory loss is a powerful device for weaving such pulp stories, but we have seen more complex forms in this sub-genre. I am missing you A predictable case. For example, a delicious cup of coffee in a dramatically staged opening scene in a café overpowers Siddhartha as the subject; With Vasu drinking coffee which he is “never going to forget” and an awkward dialogue about whether special things on the menu are really special or not, we are immediately asked to pay attention to this Bella Coffee. So when he has a memory loss, Einstein doesn’t need to figure out why this coffee is important to the plot. That’s why there’s no need to wonder if and how Vasu and Subbu might have shared a history that he no longer remembers.

I am missing you There are many new ideas on paper that fall short of becoming something worth remembering. This pattern is similar to how three separate traffic accidents bring the pair together, wipe out Vasu’s memory, and hinder their journey together. Or how both the times Vasu meets Subbu, he is traveling on a journey. Still, in such a fictional script, you have to wonder if these comments are even worth mentioning.

A scene at a railway station shows how poor the writing and execution of ideas can be. Vasu sees a strange man lying in sorrow on the stage bench and starts a conversation. This is a common phenomenon that would have happened to most of us. But then, while listening to this man’s story, Vasu deliberately misses his train. The simple story that Bobby (Karunakaran) tells belies even the justification that it was this story that forced Vasu to back down. After being given straightforward advice, Bobby has a change of heart and takes a stranger named Vasu on a trip to Bengaluru. Life can be stranger than imagination, but in cinema you need some logic, right?

Like its amnesiac protagonist, the film also misses out on important information, leaving you puzzled. For example, in a scene involving Subbu, his father (Ponvannan), and Vasu’s father (Jayaprakash), it is revealed that these two men are friends. The film treats this casually, and given where the equation between Subbu and Vasu stands at that point, you expect a revelation in which these characters piece this information together, but it never happens. Is.

If such peripheral sub-plots are the case, then even the narrative involving Vasu and Subbu seems very contrived and convoluted. Barring a few issues arising from their incompatibility, we hardly understand where these characters stand and what they want from their relationship. At some point or the other, Vasu and Subbu are reduced to mere pawns in the story. First of all, how could the aggressive society we live in allow Vasu to remain unaware of this life-changing relationship he was in? Suppose you have lost your memory; Wouldn’t you do something to understand how your life has changed, or say what you have done in your profession if not your personal life? Vasu is seen naked after recovering from the accident, moving about life as if he has forgotten not the memories of two years but a story.

Aashika Ranganath and Siddharth in a scene from ‘Miss You’. Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

There is no idea how badly Subbu’s character has been written. To show how helpless she can be, the scene set on the bus makes her look really obnoxious, obnoxious and entitled. In a wedding scene, she intimidates the children by bursting their balloons, and the film gets a self-aware spark through the red-herring of a song, which Sidharth hilariously criticizes.lusu ponnu The stereotype of the heroine in Tamil cinema (with a self-aware commentary on how this was brought about by Genelia’s character) Santosh SubramaniamTamil remake of Siddharth Bommarillu,

But you can’t help but notice how inconsistent it seems with his character. More often than not, she ends up as a damsel in distress or as a reactionary tool for whatever Vasu says about her. Neither do we understand what Subbu wants, nor are we told what she has to say about the idea of ​​marrying Vasu. At no point in its two-hour journey does this relationship drama feel like it wants to tell a love story worth the investment.

Forced to make it more commercial, Rajasekhar added a meet-cute song, unnecessary fights and a one-time song, wasting vital time that could have been used to explore these two lead characters. You are reminded of the potential of this concept when Subbu sings Bharathiar’s ‘Aasai Mugam Marandhupoche’ in a better scene. However, the story we are following does not do justice to the concept taken. Because I am missing you To convey anything new doesn’t take itself so seriously, we also struggle to take it seriously. Because “If you slowly stop loving me…”