Another name for Indian cinema could well be "remake cinema" as often films in one language are remade into another, especially if the original is a box-office hit.
Sometimes, the movie in the original language is dubbed into another lingo, at times with success, at times without. Certainly, the dubbed versions of Hollywood blockbusters turn out to be damp squibs since it doesn't work to have a Tom Cruise or a Nicole Kidman speaking Hindi or Telugu.
The latest remake comes from the Prakash Raj banner. Called Inidhu Inidhu in Tamil, it is a rehash of a popular Telugu film, Happy Days. The Tamil work is no match for its Telugu edition.
Inidhu Inidhu pans into a campus at Vellore, two hours away from Chennai, and tries to underline the agony and ecstasy of being a college student. What is it like to have to fit in? What is it liketo be rejected in love? And howdo students handle the stress of the workload?
Guhan tries to give us answers to these questions via a medley of characters played by Adith, Narayanan, Vimal, Shravan, Reshmi, Jiya Umar, Appu, Sonia and Anjala Zaveri.
The movie does make a couple of interesting observations. For example, it addresses the challenges experienced by those students who had their medium of instruction in Tamil at school and then get into college where English is the language of instruction. Another message that Inidhu Inidhu conveys is that despite their lack of seriousness, students do learn responsibility by the end of their courses.
However, in the absence of a cohesive plot line, the film begins to drag a little. The freshness of faces do appeal, but the way the script goes on and on about how college days are the best tends to get a little tiring.
If only Guhan could have been a little more circumspect and held himself back from a freefall, Inidhu Inidhu could have been memorable.
