Super Sharanya (2022) Zee5 Review: Entertainment for The Sake of Entertainment

Super Sharanya (2022) Zee5 Review: Directed by Girish A. D., ‘Super Sharanya’ released this weekend on Zee5. It is his sophomore feature directorial effort where he has yet again collaborated with Anaswara Rajan. In their first collaboration ‘Watermelon Days’, she played a teenager who’s a love interest of two guys – one of whom appears as a protagonist. In ‘Super Sharanya’, she’s shown as a college student, and as the love interest of four guys, all of whom happen to get smitten by her. While the film in itself has its share of flaws, there seems to be some strange infatuation for the creators to repeat the same theme and trick us into thinking that they are different.

Be that as it may, Super Sharanya tries to weave its coming-of-age tale around this trope. We meet Sharanya Vasudevan, a girl in her late teens who moves from her small town to pursue her education in engineering. The film follows the age-old trope of a dreamy-eyed person who moves to a big city with big dreams and finds a reality unlike what they had imagined it to be. The events in Sharanya’s life follow a similar pattern where she is annoyed by the daily nuisances she has to face and the shell of comfort that she can’t get the advantage of as she could at her home. 

She and her classmates go through the course of ragging, being told to act out in ways that make them feel uncomfortable. However, the film does not showcase that as a cautionary tale. It uses organic comedy as a way to show the frustration of these girls who try to make peace with the way things are. She or her roommates, none of them fit into the cutesy idea of how an ideal girl should be. That perhaps is one of the ideal parts about this film, which makes it an admirable attempt by the way it resists its urge to make any of them stereotypically likable female characters.

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Super Sharanya becomes constantly watchable due to the same reason. Be it her character or her roommates, their reactions not fitting in what is generally considered to be ‘ladylike’ – that is what makes the responses strike out as refreshing. When one of her teachers, a classmate, and an annoying senior student (who appears to be inspired by the Arjun Reddy – Kabir Singh trope of toxic masculinity), she learns to deal with them in a fashion that is not conventional. Her meek, scared figure is not born out of terror about the next person, but as a result of her sheer disinterest in them. The person that she actually likes, she pursues without paying any heed to the three faces from the college.

Despite that, the film becomes an exercise in entertainment for the sake of it – without any larger intent or a semblance of originality with its story. We witness the emotional growth in Sharanaya’s character with the same tropes that have been witnessed in the genre films. There is nothing substantially effective that sets it apart – as Watermelon Days does with its infinite charm (and a significant ending that showcased a new way to look at growth). Super Sharanya just ends up becoming a battle between four guys to win her over, where none of those characters are developed in a direction to add another layer to the film’s plot or to make a bigger point.

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What still works for the film are the performances by its cast, which keep the humor intact throughout the film’s duration. Anaswara Rajan takes most of the film’s load on her shoulders and pulls it off with the skill of a much senior artiste. The ups and downs in Sharanya’s character arc reflect on her face and make them appear in a way that is neither too direct nor too ambiguous. The sense of unease, the excitement to enact on her love, or the teenage angst makes their appearance through her acting performance. Besides her, the remaining cast is also impressive in their respective roles. Arjun Ashokan conveys the innocence and nervousness in the romance with the required understanding. Mamitha Baiju’s commanding performance makes her character often the star of a scene, even taking the spotlight from the central one. And even with their skills, the film falls short due to the lack of originality in its storytelling.

Super Sharanya (2022) is now streaming on Zee5

Trailer

https://youtu.be/m4I_hhZKcKU

Super Sharanya (2022) Links: Imdb,Wikipedia