Vijay Antony, Manchu Lakshmi's Tamil film Pookie is releasing in Telugu as Bookie. The film is helmed by Ganesh Chandra. The film's OTT rights are yet to be finalised. Let us see what Bookie offered to movie lovers.
Bookie story revolves around a young couple who witness turbulence in their relationship and how they deal with them. Kailash (Ajay Dishan) and Aazhi (Dhanusha) suddenly experience their relationship hit the rock after few years and this lands them in a situation as to whether to continue with the relation or move forward parting ways.
How they react and what decision they take and what role Kailash's father (Pandiarajan) and others played form rest of the narration.
Ajay Dishan came up with a natural and realistic performance. He emoted and expressed well delivering dialogues with ease and giving a relatable feeling to the viewers. Dhanusha performed well as per the situation and did justice to her role. However at times, her role looked exaggerated due to the chracterisation.
Parthiban did full justice to the role of the lead actor's father. Others performed according to their roles.
Bookie story is penned by Puthiya Parthi and is helmed by Ganesh Chandra. He tried to entertain youngsters with a Gen Z story and used many Gen Z lingos to connect chords with them. But in the process he failed to realise that one cannot differentiate between Romance categorising it into Gen Z or Older generation.
He tried to highlight the purity in love in the older genderation compared to that of immoral values of gen z relationships but sperations and parting of ways have been prevalent in the society since longtime. The screenplay is linear and treads in a predictable fashion and in the end however failed to justify the reunison of the leadpair.
The film lacked the emotions and everything turns artificial as the director stayed away from the ground reality. He spent the entire first half on how the lead pair deal with the breakup and here he tried to impresses Gen Z with jargons like binge watching, stress shopping and stress eating. But he failed to live in the reality. Both the lead pair characters turned out to be artificial bereft of any emotions. Much to the disappointment of all, the so called interval bang fell flat.
He passed most of the time and the second half with flashbacks. Instead of increasing the interest levels, these turned out to be patient testers. Ganesh Chandra's writing turned out to be lazy and he thought it was casual and interesting. Sadly, he failed to understand the meaning and thought process of Gen Z and he confined himself to use it as jargons.
The music for the film is tuned by Vijay Antony. Though songs didnot make much impact, he added value to the narration with his background music. Ganesh Chandra himself handled the cinematography and he captured the visuals in an appealing and beautiful manner. The editing of Vijay Antony could have been far better as there are scenes that slowed the pace of the narration. Dialogues are ok. Production values are fine.
Altogether, Bookie turns out to be soulless Gen Z love story. Ganesh Chandra tried to attract movie lovers with a relatable love story of the current generation, but much to the disappointment of all everything turns artificial and lacked the emotions and soul that is vital for any romantic entertainer. His story telling lacked the creativity and novelty for all the talk of genx jargons. His screenplay and direction failed to inspire confidence. Considering all these aspects, Cinejosh goes with a 1.5 rating for Bookie aka Pookie.