Vellipomakey

Story: Going on dates after connecting on social media is commonplace these days, but do we ever really know the person we become ‘friends’ with on social media?

Review: Warangal boy Chandu (Vishwak Sen) is a geeky animator based in Hyderabad and stays with two of his friends/colleagues in the vast city. His weekends are either about whiling away time on social media, or accompanying his friends and their girlfriends on their dates and ending up feeling like a third wheel. When he’s offered an opportunity to work during the weekends, he turns it down because he keeps his weekends free for his friends.

Enters a new colleague, Sruthi (Supriya), who asks for his help to handle a new project, and calls him her “only friend in the office”. But Chandu, thirsting for someone special in his life, wants more and Sruthi abruptly turns him down before he can even ask her out. An embarrassed and downbeat Chandu receives a friend request from Swetha (Nithya) on social media and things seem to look up.

The strength of Vellipomakey lies in the fact that Yakub is able to narrate an ordinary tale effectively without any frills, bells or whistles. While the cautionary tale of meeting a social media friend in the real world is nothing new, the movie manages to turn our and the protagonist’s guard down by flipping gender roles and introducing a damsel-in-distress on the other end.

Nithya’s character, Swetha, is multi-layered; the more layers you peel back, the more surprised you will be. While her presence in Chandu’s life seems to have a positive effect at first, it slowly isolates him from his friends and affects his career. But other than that, there seems to be something off with Swetha right from the start and it’s a feeling one cannot shake off. It is director Yakub, who must be credited for the effectiveness of this role and one can’t help but wonder how much more amazing the role would’ve been in the hands of someone able. All Nithya manages to do is fidget with her hair, nails and phone when she’s not pretending to cry and paint herself as a victim.

Yakub manages to embed a symbolism in everyday things, a fact that is made clear when Swetha keeps bringing Chandu oranges because she has seen them on his social media page. She never bothers to ask him if he actually likes them and he manages to signify the shallowness of their relationship with small moments like these.

Even after watching the movie, it is questionable as to why the character of Shruti even exists in this tale. She seems to exist for the sake of it and if she’s there to prove a point, it has surely gone over the head of this reviewer. Vishwak Sen does a good job at playing Chandu and is a natural. The characters of his friends Kishore and Anusha also stand out in the film.

While Vellipomakey has nothing new to offer in terms of story or finesse, you can watch it for the sake of Yakub’s directorial skills and the way the story pans out.