Dum Dum Dum had the hero and heroine falling in love
after their marriage breaks up. In Love Channel too, the hero and heroine
fall in love after their wedding is broken up due to a fight between their families.
But the difference here is that the hero and heroine have not seen each other and
so fall in love without knowing that their families are at loggerheads. But this
possibly interesting idea is quite incompetently handled by debutant director
Gunasekharan. This coupled with an under performing cast results in a movie that has
nothing going for it.
Ravikumar(Eeshwar) dislikes the whole sequence of going to see the intended bride
before marriage and so agrees to wed whoever his brother(Rajiv) and the rest of
his family picks for him. So he never sees Rajeswari(Monica), the girl that they
select. The bride and groom's efforts to see each other are also unsuccessful.
Ravi flies off to Germany on the day of his engagement, which is then broken up due
to the girl's brother(Anand) misbehaving with Ravi's young sister. Raji's
grandfather(R.Sundarrajan) takes her with him to Germany where he lives. Turns out
Ravi is his neighbor and soon, Ravi and Raji fall in love.
This is the second movie this year(after En Sakhiye ) to
feature debutants as the director, hero and heroine and the same inexperience and
amateurishness plague this effort too. The very first scene, where the hero's family
plays a trick on the grandfather to celebrate his retirement, gives us ample
evidence of this. But on the bright side, the scene also prepares us for the
shoddy nature of the rest of the movie! The scene where Eeshwar agrees to marry
the girl after seeing her tears makes us believe that the director is trying something
different. But the reactions and comments of his relatives make it clear that the
scene was intended purely for some comedy and that Eeshwar's reaction was just another
attempt to boost the hero's image at the expense of the girl.
When compared to Dum Dum Dum, the fight that breaks up the engagement definitely
has a stronger foundation here. But unfortunately, the age of the young girl involved
in the whole matter makes the entire issue distasteful. Anand's act and his subsequent
lies to turn the tables around on the young girl make his one of the most disgusting
characters in recent movie history and the casual way the relatives of the girl forgive
him after he owns up to his act is irksome.
Considering that the movie has the word 'love' in its title, the romance between
Eeshwar and Monica makes a rather delayed appearance. But it is flimsy and badly
handled. With the disputes between R.Sunderrajan and Dhamu taking up most of the screen
time during this segment, a few glances and smiles between Eeshwar and Monica are all
we see before love blossoms between them. The way he proposes to her and her way of
responding to it are a couple of bright spots in the otherwise insipid love affair
(his proposal to her also provides the reason behind the title). The disappointment
also extends to the climax. It is a damp squib after all the excitement over the two
families waiting at the airport.
Eeshwar has a long way to go before he can seem comfortable before the camera. Monica
suits the role initially when the sequences are set in India but looks uncomfortable
and awkward in all those modern dresses once the story moves to Germany. Rajiv and
Rajesh perform supporting roles as usual while Anand appears in one more villainous
role. The foreign locales do nothing to elevate the quality of the comedy of Sunderrajan
and Dhamu. Deva's tunes are forgettable.
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