One Line Review: It tries to teach important lessons, but it is inconsistent and uninteresting in the process.
YouTube Trailer Heads and Tales
Starring: Manga. Divya Sripada, Shruthi. Chandni Rao
Director: Shruthi. Chandni Rao
Release Date: Oct 22, 2021
Introduction
It is a drama film directed by Sai Krishna Enreddy and starring Srividya and Suneel, among other actors and actresses, in the lead roles. The film has a running time of 83 minutes.
Plot Summary
In the course of dealing with difficult times in their romantic relationships, three women learn to take control of their personal lives and advocate for themselves.
The first few pages of Heads and Tales are a bit confusing. The story revolves around three women whose lives become entangled as a result of the men in their lives. This is a bizarre film that is extremely difficult to follow. While the film’s tone is inconsistent, it does a poor job of communicating its message, which is disappointing given the importance and seriousness of the subject matter.
What’s not working?
Heads and Tales is littered with so many unnecessary scenes that you’ll have to fast forward through the entire thing to figure out where it’s going. The movie has several instances where it is demonstrating a very important point, and then it immediately switches to humorous music 5 minutes later. It feels like I’ve been hit by a truck, to put it mildly.
Heads and Tales has a lot of work to do to get its message across. So, for example, the film tries to convince us that the man who is beating his wife is doing so because he has lost his job and must ask his wife for money so that he can afford to buy cigarettes. As if that somehow makes it okay? Furthermore, he asserts that men are only capable of snapping at their “poor” mothers or wives, with emotional music playing in the background throughout the entire process. I mean, I’m sorry that you have the emotional maturity of a rock, but you need to learn some basic human decency at some point, don’t you think?
So, do I consider this to be very progressive and to be in some way beneficial to the cause of feminism and equality? What do you think? Should women be “a little more understanding” of their husbands beating them because -gasp- they -gasp- moved to another place because of her and have now lost their jobs as a result of their own stupidity? What is the main takeaway from this?
Social point
Heads and Tales also attempt to serve as a public service announcement for COVID but fail miserably in conveying the message. Even though you don’t seed the majority of the people wearing masks, everyone is still terrified of it. People don’t maintain their distance and spend the majority of the film sitting close to each other without a care in the world, but suddenly a peck on the cheek becomes such a big deal. People, don’t forget to put on your masks!
The interactions between the characters, like the rest of the story, are rushed and uninteresting. You are given a great deal of background information on the characters, which does not feel particularly interesting because the story itself is severely lacking. Because you don’t care about what is going on in the present, you don’t care about what happened in the past.
Manga, who works as a police officer, has one of the most tragic arcs in the film. By the end of the book, she hasn’t developed into a strong, independent keeper of the law. She’s just another whiny character who morphs into whatever mood her husband is in. Sure, Anisha’s little prank may have elicited a wave of change in her husband, but, come on, this is Anisha. The third girl, Shruthi, has absolutely no development.
Conclusion
Heads and Tales makes an attempt to do something interesting while also imparting some valuable life lessons. However, the manner in which it approaches that narrative is flawed. Except for a few heartwarming scenes, it is tedious and inconsistent, and it doesn’t accomplish much else.
