Sugarless movie review: Pruthvi Ambaar tries his best to salvage this adult comedy about diabetes

2/5

Story: Venkatesh/Venky (Pruthvi Ambaar), is a 28-year-old marketing executive at a real-estate firm, where he meets the love of his life, Mahalakshmi (Priyanka Thimmesh). The couple is all set to get married, when Venky is diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes, which he chooses to keep a secret from her. How will he keep up his charade when Mahalakshmi is intend on satiating his sweet tooth every day?

Review: A story about a young, relatively healthy man’s struggle to come to terms with a Type 2 diabetes diagnosis may not exactly be the right choice for a commercial entertainer. Diabetes, after all, is not a disease, but a condition that can be controlled with the right lifestyle choices, so we’ve been told – something that is also repeatedly brought up in Sugarless. And yet, when protagonist Venky gets this ‘devastating’ piece of news, everyone around him behaves like he’s got a deadly communicable disease. Hell, even his wife cannot digest the deception and decides to leave him.

What Sugarless lacks is sensitivity about the subject at hand and that is also because Shashidhar has chosen to present it as a comedy drama. This is a film that highlights the horrors that diabetes can unleash on the body and almost borders on mocking the lifestyle changes someone with the condition has to make and wants you to laugh at it. Even worse is when Venky’s wife Mahalakshmi realizes that leaving him was not the right response – an utterly predictable set-up in which something hits close to home (*rolls eyes in disbelief). It makes one wonder if the director has ever had a close encounter with diabetes, because if you’ve had, there’s no way that the filmi depiction would be so unacceptable.

Double entendre is the order of the day in Sugarless. Shashidhar, it would seem has attended a masterclass by director Vijayprasad in the art of adult comedy. He gets Dharmanna Kadur, Raghu Ramanakoppa and Naveen D Padil to do the heavy-lifting here and evokes a few chuckles along the way. Anoop Seelin’s music (and background score) was a big let-down.

The only saving grace, if one can call it so, is leading man Pruthvi. He is earnest in his scenes, but is, unfortunately let down by the weak script. Given that this is his first solo-lead film since his breakout role in Dia, one hoped for a better outing. Unfortunately, this is not it. There’s no chemistry with his co-star Priyanka Thimmesh; in fact, his scenes with Dattanna, Dharmanna and Naveen are a lot better.

Verdict: For a film that meant to say that diabetes is not a big deal, it goes all out in painting a pretty grim picture about the lifestyle disease and then makes fun of it too. Diabetes is no laughing matter – it is a silent killer, no doubt, but if managed well, it doesn’t prevent those with the condition from living life to the fullest, including enjoying the occasional indulgence. This, unfortunately, doesn’t come across in the film. It’s a subject that deserved so much more.