Elan makes his acting debut as a civil engineer with low ambitions and no job. He falls for a reels-maker / influencer played by Saanve Megghana. When they get married, he moves into her home – because why should the wife always move into the husband’s home! The resulting clashes over a man who willingly becomes a house-husband make up a low-key watchable, low-stakes entertainer that needed better writing and crazier humour. That’s the basic storyline and the quick review. A longer analysis follows, and it may contain spoilers.
The good news, first. On a surface-level, Pyaar Prema Kalyanam ticks all the boxes. Elan and Saanve Megghana (as Elan and Pavi) have an easy rapport and a camera-friendly presence. They make a good pair. They are surrounded by a talented cast, colourful production values – the film is an easy-enough watch if you just want an undemanding entertainer. But the Elan who directed Pyaar Prema Kalyanam is not the Elan who directed Pyaar Prema Kadhal and Star, which are both films I like very much. There is no angst. There is no “truth” in the characters or the situations. There is no great logic, either. This is the kind of movie where the hero quits a lucrative job in Dubai and comes back home because he misses his mother’s food. Pyaar Prema Kalyanam (or PPK) is like this year’s bunch of romantic films like Anbe Diana, Idhayam Murali, Youth, With Love… Everything is exaggerated. When Pavi gets a divorce notice, she doesn’t call Elan for a clarification. She, instead, heads to a live-TV show to complain about him.
So the question, now, becomes whether the film works within these exaggerated terms, and with this exaggerated flavour. And that it does only occasionally. Without Elan’s permission, Pavi shoots a video of him and posts it because she thinks he is a red flag. Her logic is that he deserves to be exposed because he is a toxic man. But Pavi did not consider the whole picture, and Elan’s non-outraged response doesn’t even rise to the level of a battle-of-the-sexes scenario. Even if you are okay when Pavi panics and runs from the wedding hall after she has gotten married, you can’t see why Elan would agree to get married to someone else at a later point. The character is supposed to be someone with zero self-respect. He just wants the easy way out of everything. He is happy being what others might consider a loser. But after a point, this spinelessness doesn’t make for a very interesting protagonist.
The best parts of PPK are when the gender role-reversal happens. Pavi goes to work. Elan becomes a house-husband, and given his low levels of ambition, he is actually happy doing the cooking and cleaning and so forth. And when his mother visits him, she sees him through her patriarchy-coded eyes and sees her son as someone wearing a nightgown and jewellery. It’s a big belly laugh. Subsequently, PPK becomes a mega-serial where Elan becomes the equivalent of the cunning daughter-in-law who wants to drive a wedge between mother and son. (Here, of course, it is mother and daughter.) Pavi becomes the equivalent of the son who now hands over the monthly salary to the wife (meaning Elan), much to her mother’s annoyance. There is so much potential here for a howlarious satire, but the jokes are mostly low-hanging fruit. As an idea, the premise is fantastic, but the laughs are mild.
The supporting cast has Radhika and Elango Kumaravel as Pavi’s parents, and MS Baskar and Geetha Kailasam as Elan’s parents. They slip into their parts with practised ease. Senthil, as Pavi’s grandfather, doesn’t get much to do. Yogi Babu plays a man who needs to change the way he treats his wife, and he also gets body-shamed as a “boodham” along the way. The film is not consistent. Forget the laughs. I would have settled for scenes like the one where Elan makes his mother-in-law crisp dosas and she sighs that it’s been so long. She makes crisp dosas for everyone else, and by the time it’s her turn to eat, the dosas become soft. Towards the end, there is a ton of messaging. But you may have already signed off earlier, when Elan’s mother pretends to be ill so that he will come back home. PPK is something that keeps threatening to deliver a big bang and all we get is a few whimpers.
