Tarak movie review: A challenging' family drama!

Director: Prakash

Cast: Darshan, Devaraj, Shanvi Srivastava, Sruthi Hariharan, Sumithra, Avinash, Kuri Prathap, Master Mahendra Prasad

After his recent commercial movies aimed at mass audience failed to create any real magic at the box office, the challenging star Darshan, also known by his fans as sandalwood’s box office sultan shifts gear from his usual avatar to complete family drama. Unlike his pure commercial action mix-masalas, which are loaded with trademark build-up scenes, dialogues and fight sequences, this one, for a change, is mostly silent and the family audience can certainly survive two-plus hours.

Insofar as the challenging die-hard fans are concerned, there are only two mini-fights with barely any punching dialogues apart from this one: “No discussions, only action.”

Even this was 'almost' another huge disappointment but is dramatically saved by a whisker in the end. If not for the last 15 to 20 minutes of Darshan’s teary performance in addition to Shanvi’s decent role and Sruthi’s dramatic touch coupled with the dynamic act by Devaraj, the film was bound to sink deep.

The first half of Tarak is just an ‘International show’ which barely takes off until post interval. Further, there is hardly any excitement in it as the director gets busy giving the film a rich look capturing the film locations from ‘same’ or some parts of the European countries.

The grand old tale is about an Indian grandfather and the grandson settled in Europe for more than two decades with a past attached to his deceased parents. However, Tarak, the protagonist, speaks better Kannada than English despite growing up in Europe for such long years! Well, such is his love for mother tongue when these days people in real life start picking up foreign accents within their short span of stay in abroad.

Unwilling to return to his grandfather in India, for a reason, he comes across Meera played by Shanvi. Later, she changes his heart and when everything is going smooth, Meera poses a 60-day challenge to Tarak, to prove his ‘real’ love for her with certain conditions.

As a part of the challenge, he returns to India but in return, he gets entangled in a sentimental situation and unavoidable circumstance to marry a sweet and honest girl Sneha portrayed by Sruthi, who is being taken care by his grandfather. In between, there is many more emotional dramas building up to the climax.

The humour part of it is a complete disaster but for one laughable scene in the end when the grandfather informs Tarak that the doctor who was certain about his death in a maximum of 15 days after he had survived a massive cardiac arrest, has died!

Tarak manages to return to Europe for a while, he is heartbroken to see Meera suffering from a deadly disease. Here, the director introduces a new disease to the silver screen, it is called ‘motor neuron disease’. Unaware of such a disease? Do not worry, the girl’s father briefly explains about the disease. Will he lose his love or will he marry Sneha to keep his ailing grandfather alive, is the final challenge for Tarak. Nothing great or new but a watchable family drama.