The more sensational news is that, the script is a multi-starrer, and no ordinary one at that: it has Vijay, Jeeva and Srikanth, all three who are very good actors in their own right, but not in a great patch at the moment.
The story is about the life of three friends, Panchavan Parivendan aka Pari (Vijay), Venkatramakrishnan aka Venkat (Srikanth) and Sevalkodi Senthil (Jeeva), who are students of the best institution in India, "Ideal Engineering College". They invite the wrath of their college Dean, Virumaandi Santhaanam aka VIRUS (Sathyaraj) when Pari openly speaks up against the system after one of their College seniors commit suicide, being unable to complete his project on time. How they handle that and complete their education and what happens after that in their life follows the rest of the story. The aforesaid three are reprising the roles of Aamir Khan, R.Maadhavan and Sharman Joshi respectively from the Bollywood Blockbuster, "3 Idiots".
I, personally found "3 Idiots" to be a bad movie because I had read "Five Point Someone" only a couple of days before watching "3 Idiots" and I felt that the movie was quite unfair to the book and that it did a "balathkar" of the book. However, it touched the hearts of people because it showcased a huge problem - the illogical education system - in a light manner.
To those people who loved "3 Idiots", "Nanban" may be a bit of a dampener, because it is just a xerox copy of the original. It is surprising, because, you would have expected to see more of director Shankar's touch.
It would be obviously unfair to compare an Aamir Khan with Vijay. Aamir is older and has worked with some world class directors and so, the perfection that he etches to his roles can't be usually re-enacted that easily. To his credit, Vijay has done a very neat job of playing the smart Pari with an attitude that rocks, though at times, the body language that Vijay displays - especially at the beginning of the movie - seems to be an imitation of Aamir's. He could have avoided that.
Srikanth has come up with a sterling performance. What is good is that, he hasn't tried imitating Maadhavan from the original and looks every inch a college boy during the flash back. This movie should resurrect his sagging career. In the scene where he convinces his dad to let him pursue Wildlife photography, he rocks!
Jeeva underplays his role very well and does justice to his part. The actor seems to mature more and more in every movie. Good for him!
Together, the three actors display a rocking chemistry and look every inch as three close friends. That should be a big factor in ensuring the success of "Nanban".
Sathyaraj plays the strict and hardworking professor with ideals. Those who had watched the original would swear to God that no one could do justice to Boman Irani's role in "3 Idiots" in any language again. I thought so too - till I saw Sathyaraj in this movie. Brilliantly cast, he is a huge asset to this movie. His role has been well etched and equally well performed. One wonders why he doesn't do such roles more often.
Ileana's acting is worse than what Kareena's was in the original. Thankfully, she doesn't have a huge role to play in the story. Sathiyan, as Srivatsan does a neat job of playing "Silencer" from the original.
Music by Harris Jeyaraj is good. A couple of songs are hum worthy and carry the movie forward rather than slowing it down.
Coming to the negatives, as I had mentioned earlier, the movie is an exact xerox copy of "3 Idiots" and so, the negatives in the original also get carried forward here. For example, in the scene where the friends try to deliver the grand daughter of VIRUS in the Table Tennis room (due to certain unfortunate reasons, she could not be transported to a hospital), there is a power cut in the college. Would such a huge college not have a generator facility? Shockingly, it doesn't. Which is comfortable, because, it would allow our "hero" to let him use his smartness to connect an inverter to car batteries and power up the room to perform the delivery! Wow, what brilliance! Seriously, Shankar, didn't you have the brains enough to think over this?
Next, there comes the inexplicable logic behind the crassness involved in Silencer's Teachers Day speech. I mean, in the original, only the word "chamatkar" would have been changed to "balathkar". Here, the many words in the whole speech has been modified to make the speech sexually explicit. Wonder what the censors were doing there, especially during the last two lines of the speech, which should have been muted.
But, on the whole, if you haven't watched "3 Idiots", you could love this movie. If you had, go with an open mind. You may just like it. If you'd ask me, I'd say that it's worth a watch, for either case. If you are a Vijay fan, by the way, you would love it. It's been long since he acted in a script where he doesn't jump 10 storeys. We can gladly welcome "Nanban" warmly!
A solid 6/10!
Trivia:
* This is perhaps the first movie in a long time where all the main characters take a dig at Vijay and he doesn't retreat with any punch dialogues. :D
* This is also perhaps the first time where there is a smooch (towards the ending) and the Chennai censors have granted it a "U" rating. Good to know that they are becoming more broad minded. :P
