Produced by Photon Kathaas and RS Infotainment, directed by Gautham Vasudev Menon, Neethane En Ponvasantham is a love story (or as the director cleverly puts it across – moments from Varun-Nithya’s love story). With excellent acting, fantastic music.
The film starts off when Varun joins college and he meets Nithya in thecollege culturals. They share a history of love-hate relationship. First, they meet when they were kids and then when they were in school. Sparks fly when they meet duing college and they are together for the next four years. The film tries to capture some interesting moments in their lives.
Despite excellent acting by Samantha and Jiiva, you really do not care as muchfor Varun and Nithya as you should have. Beyond a point their fights become irritating and you wonder why at all they should be together. The biggest drawback of NEP is the script focusses too much on the fights between Varun and Nithya and not so much on romantic moments. And you know the director has faltered when he packs off Nithya on a holiday to Edinburgh, and focuses on Varun and you immediately sit up with interest. The moment Nithya is back, the script sags again.
Just like in the Tamil film Khushi, a key scene happens on the rooftop just before the interval – the roof topacts as a character here (Varun-Nithya have had some real intimate moments in this rooftop), but the scene is absolutely ineffective due to the mishandling by the director.. Nithya teaching Varun how to pronounce Edinburgh, the initial school scenes, the climax scene in the same rooftop, the family scenes which changes Varun from a boy to a man
The climax is very good on its own,but when compared to the rest of the film, it is outstanding. And what works here are the moments where no one talks – and this is where Raja scores. What a BGM in the last few minutes. When you hear Raja’s BGM in the last few scenes, you immediately realize what is wrong with the film – through the film, some one or other keeps on talking, and there is just no scope for BGM