Padesave

Synopsis: Karthik Raju, a young man, is entangled in a love triangle with two women in his life — he loves one of them and treats the other as a friend. However, the girls have complete opposite feelings towards Karthik and that results in situations getting messy. How will Karthik uncomplicated this situation?

Movie Review: Padesave is a predictable love triangle that mixes up the definitions of love, friendship and marriage. With so much going on, the movie leaves the audience as clueless as the characters in it.

The movie begins with Karthik (Karthik Raju) saving his friends life in a heroic fight. The introduction itself sets stage to the predictability that is going to ensue. Karthik is a poor student but a genius junk artiste who is misunderstood by his family. His childhood friend, Niharika (Nithya Shetty obviously introduced over slow-mo shots) moves into the house next to his after spending years at boarding school and college. Their friendship is cemented over a peppy song.

While Karthik only sees Niharika as a friend, she has romantic feelings for him. Niharika confesses all of this to Swati (Sam) who is already engaged. An accidental kiss, a friend's off-handed mistake and zero communication between two people who call themselves best friends leads Niharika to believe Karthik also loves her.

Meanwhile, Karthik falls for Swati, becomes her knight in shining armour while she plays the damsel in distress with unsolved mommy-issues. And of course, Karthik swoops in every time to save the day.

Whether the right people marry their respective folks eventually, is the climax of the movie. However, the story doesn't miss out on adding the usual “drunken-hero-slapping-the-comedian” track, cross-dressing humour and jokes on homosexuality.

Newcomers Karthik Raju, Nithya Shetty and Sam will not let you forget that they are newcomers throughout. Raasi’s comeback with this movie as Swati’s mother is more of a guest appearance.
With immature characterisation and a weak story line with way too many elements, Padesave is a tiring watch. If you can look past the filmy elements and relate to the situations that the lead characters find themselves in, then you might find it entertaining.