Premaloka


Premaloka in Kannada, Paruva Ragam in Tamil, is a 1987 bilingual romantic musical film written and directed by V. Ravichandran in his directorial debut. He additionally served as the lead actor and producer under Eshwari Productions.
Produced simultaneously in Kannada and Tamil, the film stars V. Ravichandran in the lead role alongside Juhi, in her acting debut. Leelavathi and Lokesh play supportive roles in the Kannada version while Jai Shankar and Manorama reprise their respective roles in the Tamil version. Vishnuvardhan, Ambareesh, Prabhakar, Srinath, and Urvashi made guest appearances in the film. Thengai Srinivasan, Cho Ramaswamy and Delhi Ganesh portray the respective roles of Ambareesh, Prabhakar, and Srinath, in the Tamil version. The film is loosely inspired by the American film Grease 2.

Plot

A young man is in love with his classmate who rebukes his advances. Desperate for her affection, he decides to pose as a mysterious biker and sweep her off her feet.

Cast

Production

The film marked the directorial debut of V. Ravichandran. For the lead actress, Ravichandran rejected 52 girls before choosing Juhi Chawla as the heroine. Apart from composing music, Hamsalekha has also written lyrics for all songs and dialogues for the film. When Ravichandran was mulling over the theme of the film, Hamsalekha suggested him to do a musical script on the lines of Sound of Music and Grease 2.
Jolly Bustin who went on to become a stunt master worked as a body double for Ravichandran.

Soundtrack

composed the music for the film and also penned the lyrics for the Kannada soundtrack while Vairamuthu penned the lyrics for the Tamil soundtrack. The soundtrack album consists of eleven tracks. The distribution rights were bought by Lahari Music for a hitherto record price of 150,000.
The music and the songs in the film were widely appreciated and created records in the audio cassette sales during the time. Tulsiram Naidu of Lahari Audio, says, "Premaloka continues to be the biggest hit among film music albums in Kannada cinema. Back then audio rights were sold for a pittance and nominally paid 100 or 1,000. With Premaloka things changed and rights began to be sold in lakhs". The lyrics of the soundtrack also received acclaim from critics.
The soundtrack sold 3.8million units, setting a record for South Indian soundtrack albums.
The lyrics of two songs from Grease 2 – Back to School Again and Who's That Guy? were retained as Hogona Kaalejige and Yaarivanu, respectively. Another song Premalokadinda Banda was an adaptation of the 1963 Chinese song Cup Shadow.

Kannada version

Tamil version

Box-office

The film opened to an underwhelming response for "first few days" and was almost declared as failure "for the first three weeks". However, due to positive word-of-mouth, the film became successful a month after the release. Karnataka government granted one day leave to watch the movie

Legacy

One of the songs, Nodamma Hudugi, was reused by Sundeep Malani for his Kanglish film SMS 6260 featuring Diganth, Kiran, Janu. Hamsalekha would go on to compose music for many more Ravichandran films.
Premaloka was dubbed in Telugu as Premalokam. Juhi Chawla recalling her experiences stated that "My 45-day shoot for Premaloka ensured that going on the set of Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak was a cakewalk. The other good thing about Premaloka was that the team was young, so it was like college buddies hanging out. Since the film was a musical, it was like a party on the set. The only senior person there was our cinematographer. I fondly look back at my stint in Kannada cinema during my early days as the foundation for my career in Bollywood".