Love Birds (1996 film)

Love Birds is a 1996 Indian Tamil-language romantic drama film directed by P. Vasu. The film stars Prabhu Deva and Nagma with Raja, Vadivelu and Sarath Babu playing other pivotal roles. The film's score and soundtrack composed by A. R. Rahman was highly successful. The film was released on 15 January 1996 and had an average performance commercially. It is a remake of the 1986 Kannada film Ratha Sapthami for which Vasu was the co-screenwriter.

Plot
After accidentally meeting, Mridula (Nagma) and Arun (Prabhu Deva) fall in love. The young couple both come from affluent families, and so, to test whether they will be suited for a long-term relationship, they both decide to live together. However, a few months into their relationship, Arun and Mridula get in an accident and Arun dies. A devastated Mridula is unable to get over his absence, and before long starts seeing Arun in strange visions everywhere she goes. Her family eventually decide that relocating to another country might help Mridula move on, and so they send her to the UK. Once she arrives there, she meets Mano (Raja), a young man attracted to her. She knows that her parents expect her to fall for Mano. But as she can't move on, she runs away. She meets David who looks exactly like Arun. She follows him and finds out where he lives and works. Whenever she tries to talk to him, he denies his relationship with her and says he doesn't know her. However, she later finds out that her father had Arun sent away as he had helped with Arun's sister's marriage and had threatened to let it all go downhill for her. Arun moves to the UK in hopes that he can forget about Mridula but he can't and when he meets her, he realises this. When Mridula's father finds out Arun is still alive, he tries to kill him. However, he realises his mistake and lets the lovebirds reunite.

Production
Prabhu Deva was signed to work on the film after working in Shankar's 1994 hit Kadhalan, and his pair from that film, Nagma, was also signed on. British Indian musician Apache Indian was also signed on to sing and dance for a music video in the film.

The film was predominantly shot across London, with scenes also canned at Buckingham Palace and at a Hilton Hotel. The producers had earlier location scouted in the city and took music director, A. R. Rahman along to get a feel of the city.

Soundtrack
The soundtrack was composed by A. R. Rahman, with lyrics by Vairamuthu for the original Tamil version, by Sirivennela Seetharama Sastry for the Telugu version and by P. K. Mishra and Mehboob for the Hindi version. The song "Malargaley" is set to the raga Hamir Kalyani.

Release and reception
The film opened in January 1996. The film opened days earlier in Malaysia than India and was shown across 27 theatres in the country, a figure only usually exceeded for Tamil films starring Rajinikanth, and this mirrors the large release the film received. K. Vijiyan of New Straits Times gave a positive review saying, "This movie seems made for courting couples, especially those who are facing problems with disapproving parents" and added that "strong dialogue makes the film rise slight above the ordinary". Kalki was more critical, calling it yet another blowback for Prabhu Deva. The Hindu wrote "To bank  on the Kathalan team of  Prabhu  Deva  and Nagma to deliver the goods without a powerful story to back their effort has cost Pyramid Films International, the makers of Love Birds, dearly despite shooting most part of the second half  in England.  Experienced  director P. Vasu has  written  the  story, dialogue,  screenplay  and somehow he is not able to  infuse  his usual  sentiment  oriented  touches because  the  scope  is  very minimal  in the plot" but praised Rahman's music and Sekar's cinematography. Love Birds became an average grosser at the box office but was a little better than Prabhu Deva's next, Mr. Romeo. The actor thus had to go through a slump in his film career.