Pintu Nanda and Prachi Sinha in a scene from Chanda Na Tume Tara

Drama, romance, action with an icing of an item number, Chanda Na Tume Tara has all the ingredients of a formula film. The best part about the film is that it works in parts and the worst is it falls flat as a package.

Baadal (Deepak), a son of a truck driver played by Mihir Das, has just completed engineering. He is in love with Chandini (Prachi Sinha), a family friend. All looks hunky-dory till Dadabhai (Manoj Mishra), a real-estate mafia man, decides to take over the restaurant owned by Chandni’s father (Ajit Das) by hook or crook.

The restaurant owner, however, refuses to yield to Dadabhai’s muscle power. The villain, in a bid to get the restaurant, turns his eyes on his daughter. That’s when our hero enters. He kicks Dadabhai! With a bruised ego, he plans to take revenge. A few characters die, few come back to life, hero turns Devdas, enters modern day Chandramukhi aka Tara (Debjani).

The overview might show a ‘decent’ story, but zoom in the reasoning lens a bit and it is full of flaws.

To begin with, the hero comes riding on the wrong side, hits the heroine’s Scooty, who while quarrelling with him falls into a ditch only to be saved by the hero. Cut by sharp edges of the rock, blood drips down his hands to the forehead of the heroine and the next moment, they are in love.

Another conundrum is how a profusely bleeding girl wrapped in polythene thrown into a dense jungle survives and continues living the life of a vagrant instead of going back home. How does the hero find her? Did he tie a radio collar to her?

Yet, scriptwriter Chitta Ranjan Prusty shows flashes of brilliance. The protagonist promises to bring a plump husband for his sister and several scenes later when he returns home, he brings a laughing Buddha. It is one of the rare scenes that’s well connected while others are uneasy bedfellows.

The camera work is utterly pitiable. It shakes when there is an intense scene. Maybe the poorly written script sent a chill down the cameraman’s spine! An animation scene in the opening sequence shows a sword flung by the hero causing a car to blow up. The animation is so below standard that it appears an amateur animation student was showing off what he learnt on the first day of college. The camera is head over heels all the time over the hero’s biceps and heroine’s belly.

The costume designer never realises that donning a new age Odia girl in jeans and tops may be better than lehenga-choli and chunri. The mechanical wardrobe of the antagonist’s army is clichéd.

The film scores heavily for its action scenes. Another asset is Mihir Das. He plays the flamboyant drunk truck driver with élan. His particular scene with Pintu Nanda leaves you in splits. Though Manoj laughs like Nana Patekar, he plays a villain decently, well accompanied by his sidekick Menaketan, who fares much better than his previous movie, Om Sai Ram.

Deepak appears to be a narcissist overly obsessed with his muscles and smile. He simply loves to ham it up. He shows his athleticism and that becomes a bit over the top when in a duet, he is dancing alone to show his moves, few of them logical.

The same goes for the songs while the lyricists continue to be fascinated by the kiss of love with Rati sara …Deuthibi taku chuma. Debjani is in an extended cameo role. Other character actors are good while debutante Prachi gives an average performance. Chandini’s chemistry clicks with the hero while that of Tara’s reeks of lust.

The tagline says ‘an eternal love story’ probably because it takes an eternity for the film to reach its climax. What could have been a brisk paced love and revenge story is completely undone, courtesy poor editing. Debutant director Ramesh Rout could have hitched the film’s wagon to the star but ends up giving no reason to be over the moon.