Pencil Movie Review: Muddle-headed sketching

Apart from effective background scores for movie assignments, music directors in Chennai seem too keen on scoring a point onscreen also. GV Prakash, a young teeny bopper type music director in Tamil cinema who recently attained a milestone of composing music for 50 films, has his latest film ‘Pencil’ hitting the Telugu market this week. Giving him company is Vijay Anthony, a top-seeded name in Tamil cinema for his music direction in the second dubbed release released this week in local theatres.

True to its title, the film, based on a true incident, grounds itself entirely in a higher secondary school environment where there are smart students and also wards from influential and wealthy families. In a realistic depiction of the happenings in this field, the film highlights the interplay of open greed and unhealthy competition between rival institutions where anything goes in the name of enhancing brand value and earning obscene profits.

Of course, there is a heady whiff of teen romance, with the heroine Sri Divya, seen in a snug fit kind of a role as a geeky, book-wormish girl who ignores the hero initially but falls for him later and helps him when he needs it the most. Borrowing from western filmmakers, who unleash a series of circumstantial twists in a whodunit film, this flick stops strategically at the interval stage, when the hero is caught at the scene of crime with a hapless expression as his rival-cum- classmate lies dead.

The heroine sees him at the spot and reassuringly tries to unravel the secret behind the dastardly murder. All because, she has read murder mysteries chock-a-block to know how such incidents can be untied and brought to its logical conclusion! Having brought the proceedings to such a stage, debutant director Mani Nagaraj, who till then attempts to come up with a passable film which could have retained a steady interest level just lets the momentum slip.

He tries too many variations wanting the audience to make its own conclusion by parading a whole range of suspects. Here is where the movie collapses into a painful drag, making the watching public impatient for the film to end somehow. And as it does, the laboured climax with its preachy conclusion erodes the feel good factor to the film totally.

Since it is a coming-of-age kind of a film, the milieu mercifully restricts the duet numbers between the lead pair, which is rectified as the end titles roll on, courtesy a fast-paced song. Better luck next time, is what the director, an erstwhile assistant of Gautham Vasudev Menon needs for his second film, as and when it happens.

Film Name : Pencil
Cast : GV Prakash and Sri Divya
Direction : Mani Nagaraj
Genre : Thrilller
Likes : A genuine pre-college ambience
Dislikes : Second half

By K Naresh Kumar