Every crest must be followed by a trough and the Sethupathi wave has - sadly - fallen to a trough, with Idharkuthaane Aasaipattai Balakumara. It is a light hearted comedy movie - and you can be excused from watching this movie if you are already lost in the recent spate of comedies such as Sonna Puriyadhu, Varuthapadatha Valibar Sangam, Ya Ya, Thillu Mullu etc.
Vijay Sethupathi's bull ride in the box office had started with Pizza. Driven solely by the story and the well concealed twist in the end, the movie became a huge hit through word-of-the-mouth popularity. Soon, as his next two ventures, Naduvula Konjam Pakkatha Kaanom and Soodhu Kavvum became major hits which were loved equally by both the critics and the masses, Vijay Sethupathi proved that he is a thinking actor who chooses different scripts which are content oriented. It is definitely Vijay Sethupathi's dullest movie - including Thenmerku Paruvakaatru and Sundarapandian - and this can probably be attributed to the standards that Vijay Sethupathi has set for himself. If it were any other actor, you could have said 'not a bad attempt' and tried to laugh it off. But it is Vijay Sethupathi, and the movie has followed a cult movie like Soodhu Kavvum and so , obviously it is a big let down, if you were expecting something very exciting. The story is a simple tale of a day in the life of two people: the potagonists Bala (a rather timid Ashwin Kakamanu) and Kumar alias Sumaar Moonji Kumar (Vijay Sethupathi). Bala is a Sales Executive in a bank who struggles to satisfy his boss (played excellently by M.S. Bhaskar) on one end and meet the demands of his girlfriend (an effervescent Swathi Reddy). Sumaar Moonji Kumar is a - hold your breath - wastrel whose only aim is to get the girl from his opposite house (Nandhita of Attakathi fame) to fall in love with him. The only plotline is that a woman in need of a rare blood group (it seems there is a H1 blood group) and that can be provided by Kumar alone. Bala, who is the reason for the accident that injured the woman in the first place, feels a moral obligation to help her and hence attempts to find Kumar and get him to donate his blood. But, Bala, is on his way to a wine shop and Kumar must reach him before Bala can gulp the liquor - else, the poor pregnant woman - yes, she is pregnant, and that is supposed to make us sympathize with her - could die. Does Bala find Kumar? Does Kumar manage to impress his girl? That forms the rest of the story. You can almost predict the ending from a mile away, so when it happens, it does not actually surprise or impress you - it was just the typical all-is-well ending. With better writing, this could have been a heartwarming movie. There are portions such as how Swathi is hopelessly in love with Bala that she keeps coming back to him in spite of all the promises that he has broken, the small smile from Nanditha for which Bala agrees to *SPOLIER ALERT* donate his blood and so on. The movie has a message which is said rather too subtly that I am not sure people would even think about it: Don't Drink. But instead of capitalizing on these, the director puts much emphasis on the unnecessary murder at the Wine shop and the subsequent investigations, the role of Soori and a host of numerous other characters who are wasted in the name of comedy. Because of this, there are a lot of scenes which you feel are needless and crass - and they bring rather an embarrassing shrug on your face than a laugh. The adultering wife and her luring Soori and the two other murderers are just pointless distractions in the story. Vijay Sethupathi and Swathi Reddy provide good perfomances but the other actors with the exception of of M.S.Bhaskar - who steals the show in one scene - have not emoted that well. This is probably the Director's fault and the first-timer Gokul should probably work more on extracting the best out of his actors. Songs are a problem here - they severely hamper the pace of the movie and cinematography has nothing great to write about. Overall, Idharkuthaane Aasaipattai Balakumara is a reality check for Vijay Sethupathi. Let us hope he bounces back from these and chooses stronger scripts and better roles than that of a wastrel who is hopelessly in love - we have already seen it a hundred times in our movies. For the audience, it can be a mildly amusing venture. Don't go with much hopes. It is just an addition to those ordinary Tamil comedy movie that seems to release every weekend these days. A modest 2.5/5.
I took a risk by booking for "Kalakalappu" on the very first day. And that too, to watch it with family. Though the trailer was rather dull, the movie's cast boasted of people such as "Chennai 28" fame Siva, who can make you laugh with anything he says, "Kalavaani" Vimal, who has consistently chosen good roles to play and most importantly Santhanam whose mere presence adds screen value these days to movies. Added to that, the fact that Sundar.C - who can forget his "Ullathai Alli Tha" - is directing a movie after a long time. Well, I took a risk and am more than happy that I did it. Because at the end of the movie, as I was walking out, everyone was busy discussing which of the scenes was the funniest and everyone had one favorite scene of their own. My mom, sister and granma were all praise for my choice of movie to watch as a family. Voila, Sundar.C, what were you doing other than directing all these years?!
The storyline concerns Seenu - played neatly by Vimal - whose only possession his his three-generation old traditional restaurant, "Masala Cafe", which is now in ruins. He struggles to keep business afloat and hopes to make his restaurant big one day. When the new food inspector Madhavi decides that "Masala Cafe" isn't hygenic enough and gives Seenu a two month notice period to either improve the infrastructure or close his Cafe down, his brother, Raghu - perhaps Siva's best role yet - an ex-con, helps Seenu to get out of the problem. Meanwhile, a set of diamonds, hidden in a cell phone case, comes accidentally into Siva's hands and all hell breaks loose.
Anjali as Madhavi and Oviya as Maya play the love interests of Seenu and Raghu respectively. One is surprised that after acting many strong character oriented roles right from her first movie, Anjali has opted to play a not-so-significant tole in this movie. Also, she definitely looks odd in song sequences wearing skimpily clad outfits. Oviya doesn't have a big role to play but she does the best with what she has.
The real plus of the movie is that the first half is definitely owned by Siva's unique brand of humor evoking statements. For example, "Kaalam kaalama attu figure ku good-u boy-um, good-u figure ku attu boy-um thaan set aagum!" and "Unaku ipdi ellam doubt ae vara koodathu. Naan yaaru kaasu kuduthalum vaangipen!", when Maya expresses doubt if he would accept money from her, has the audience in splits. Though he has a long way to go in acting, his unique dialogue delivery style and the baby-faced innocence make up for it.
The second half, though, belongs to Santhanam. As the to-be-groom of Madhavi, all the scenes involving him evoke hearty laughter. The car chase scene in the second half and the confusion in it evokes wild laughter. In fact, there are so many laughs throughout the movie and most of them work.
The movie is not without its flaws: there are lots of logical loopholes in the movie and the songs actually stagnate the pace of the movie. For example, Madhavi, who seems nonchalant towards Seenu accepts his proposal at once. And when there are so many ways to hide your assets, would the villain be stupid enough to hand over the job to his stupid cousin, that too in a cell phone? However, such an analysis would be too rough on a movie which tries to evoke healthy laughter throughout.
Sundar.C is back to directing movies and with a bang. Go watch it and laugh your heart out. Quite an enjoyable fare.
Director Rajesh of "Siva Manasula Sakthi" and "Boss Engira Baskaran" fame hopes to hit a hat-trick through his third venture "Oru Kal Oru Kannadi" (OKOK) starring Udhayanidhi Stalin, Hansika Motwani and Santhanam in main roles. But the problem is, though the treatment tries to be fresh, the story and screenplay are often seen ones in tamil movies - the best examples being the director's first two movies itself.
Sample this: The female lead actor, in spite of a number of attempts by the male lead actor, seems uninterested in him. The male lead persists and finally makes her agree. Then, Santhanam does something stupid and causes a rift between the male and female lead. This rift widens to the extent of the female lead getting engaged to another guy. Finally, something really stupid happens and the male and female leads are united.
The above is the storyline of OKOK. You could have been excused for thinking that I was telling you the storyline of "Boss Engira Baskaran" too, because it's virtually the same over there. Sometimes, in the second half, the staleness of the storyline gets to you and you start getting bored. Fortunately, every time you begin to get bored, Santhanam comes in and makes you laugh.
You need to give it to him: Santhanam carries the movie on his shoulders and delivers his witty dialogues with perfect timing. But sometimes even his dialogues fail to arise laughter and it is more so because you tend to feel that he shared a better rapport with Jeeva (in 'SMS') and Arya (in 'Boss..'). He plays "Paartha" aka "Parthasarathy" - a Brahmin boy from Triplicane. It is visible that his accent and role have been well etched and due credit must be given to the director and actor for that.
Udhayanidhi Stalin does much better than what I expected him to do, but he still falls way short of the justice that amny other actor could have done to the role. His role has shades of grey - he back stabs his so-called best friend 'Paartha' on a numerous occasions - which goes unnoticed partly because of the monotonous expression on Udhayanidhi's face.
Hansika actually has a decent scope to emote in this movie and the child-artist-turned-actor does her best. However, her dialogue delivery leaves much to be desired. Saranya Ponvannan as Udhayanidhi's mother shines in her role and once again proves what a capable artist she is. The rest of the cast also do justice to their part.
The cameos by Sneha, Arya and Andrea are a wasted effort - they neither have the desired effect, nor do they create a huge impact, which, again, is one of the downfalls of the movie. The climax - especially- leaves you irritated: its a shameless confession that the director has ran out of ideas to unite the male and female lead.
Bottomline: An otherwise ordinary effort, watchable only for Santhanam. 2.5/5.
Ever gone to one of those movies just because your friends force you to and you expect it to be boring and dull, whereas it turns out to be surprisingly good? That is what happened to me with Ambuli. Neither the title or the trailer were impressive. It seemed like one of those bad low budget movies from the outset, so I was never been in the mood to watch it in a theater. But my friends insisted and I did. And I' quite thankful now that they insisted. Ambuli definitely is worth a watch in the theaters.
"Avatar" started this new wave of 3D flicks. Two years after its release, Kollywood comes up with its first Steroscopic 3D flick - Ambuli. What is heartening is that the makers have concentrated not just on the 3D effects to be delivered - as usually is the case with most of the 3D movies - but the story and screenplay have been quite well etched and executed. The result is a movie where 3D does exactly what it has to: enhance the quality of movie watching experience without overtaking the need for a plausible storyline. In that regard, Ambuli scores well.
The story is set in the late 1970s in a rural town with Tamil Nadu with more superstitions than people, and the most important of them being the presence of an animal born to a woman 25 years ago which comes out at night and kills people who wander along a forest route connecting the town with a nearby college. Sounds like a joke right? That is what our lead actor and his best friend think and they set out to break the myth; to bring proof to everyone that "Ambuli" doesn't exist. But some myths turn out to be true.
The first ten minutes offer exhilarating 3D fun. The first half that follows is engaging because the 3D here isn't the only good thing: it has a decent story and a logical screenplay as well for three fourths of the movie, quite a rarity in tamil movies, nowadays!
Apt casting is one of the biggest pluses of the movie: almost everyone match their roles and play their part well. The fact that debutants have been cast in the leading roles actually help the cause of the movie - it brings a much needed freshness also to the script. Fortunately, the songs don't bore you and are used such that the story moves forward with the songs.
For a "creature" movie, the plot is quite logical, and it is obvious that the directors have done quite a lot of research to explain how "Ambuli" was born.
However, as the movie veers towards the climax, the plot loses all logic and the confrontation of "Ambuli" with Parthiban is more funny than scary. R.Parthiban's behavior is confusing, at many instances. His role has been wasted. But for these minor plot holes, the movie is definitely entertaining and worth watching.
Usually, with popular movies that are remade, there are bound to be comparisons. Director Shankar, who prides in making "original" movies, has taken an exception for "Nanban", obviously due to both the scope and the vast canvas that the script offers.
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
Selvaraghavan's movies are never perfect.. I personally didn't like his maiden venture (as writer) in "Thulluvadho Ilamai". But he made us sit up and take note of him with "Kaadhal Kondein" and "7G Rainbow Colony". Again, these were not perfect movies: they had some bad acting at certain scenes, some loopholes in the story. But they worked, because Selva makes movies that you can instantly connect to. He is a time tested master at showcasing situations and emotions in a boy-girl relationship that other directors dared not to enter into (at least before his entry into Tamil cinema). And with "Pudhupettai" and "Aayirathil Oruvan", he scaled new peaks though both the movies had a lot of sloppy scenes. "Mayakkam Enna" is a near-realistic story of a young and aspiring wildlife photographer Karthik alias Genius (Dhanush) who wants to make it big. Along the way, he falls in love with the girl whom his friend is dating, marries her, gets back stabbed by the man he considers as his idol in wildlife photography, meets with an accident and goes mentally unstable. What happens next makes for a gripping last 20 minutes.
Typical of all other Selva's movies, this movie has its share of positives and negatives. Addressing the negatives first, the screenplay is ordinary at instances and as a result, some scenes are not clearly understandable straight away. Maybe it is because the movie was wrapped up in less than two months from start to finish. But compared to his other ventures, the screenplay here wasn't the best.
Secondly, the first half, though is entertaining, I'm not clear on why it even exists. Its almost as if there are two separate movies: the first half where Dhanush falls in love with his "nanbanin kaadhali" :P and the second half where he goes mentally unstable.
Thirdly, the growth of Dhanush to the standard of an international photographer is shown in something like two minutes. Similarly, some other sequences are abrupt and leave a lot to be desired.
Finally, the casting of Dhanush (with due respect to the national award winning actor) is questionable. He does his role well, yes, but I thought the part where he goes mental could have been portrayed better with someone of more versatility (I don't know, Vikram, maybe, or even Ajith). Maybe the other actors weren't brave enough to play the role or maybe Selva didn't bother approaching them, but I personally think that the movie would have been better that way.
Despite all these, "Mayakkam Enna" is my Tamil movie of the year (I can't compare this with "Deivathirumagal" because the latter is an outright copy of "I am Sam"), because this movie has a soul. It is a modern fairy tale, told in typical Selva style, that tells you to chase your dreams and respect friends and family and be grateful for them. I am totally for it. That is exactly where Selva scores.
Dhanush, as usual, delivers a powerhouse performance and shows a lot of maturity in acting for his age. But, as mentioned earier, this role demands more versatility than even Dhanush's capacity but still he does a neat job of it. Kudos, Dhanush.
Richa Gangopadhyay (photo below) makes a dream debut. A role of immense scope and she scores! She's one of the best finds of this year, if you ask me. I was seriously moved in the scene where she breaks down while she cleans the floor of her own blood due to the miscarriage.
The other friends and family of Dhanush all almost play their roles to perfection. Some scenes are sheer poetry: like the one where Dhanush falls down mesmerised while capturing a photograph of a bird (the photo below), the scene when he requests an old woman to pose for a photo, the climax and most importantly, the scene during the end credits (dont walk out when the movie ends; wait for the end credit; the small scene in it is perhaps the best part of the movie).
All songs are good, though the "Pirai Thedum" song is definitely the highlight. GV Prakash Kumar does a neat job in the background score: silent when necessary. Sometimes, a music director needs to also know when exactly to be silent. GVP scores a bull's eye in that regard in this movie.
I have spoken enough about Selva in the first paragraph, so I don't think I must go into telling that he proves his worth once again. I was pleasantly surprised to note that he has almost minimized the use of (his erstwhile popular) crass sexual innuendos in this movie to a bare minimum. Way to go, Selva!
The cinematography is decent. The editing could have been better. Yes, the second half reminds one of "A Beautiful Mind", agreed, but its more than that. It doesn't feel like a copy of that movie, rather it only complements it. Whether it was inspired from "A Beautiful Mind" or not, only Selva should answer. Overall, if you have an open mind, you will enjoy this "Mayakkam Enna". Or if you expect a movie where the "hero" has to have three fight sequences, two romantic songs and one intro song and should jump 20 floors without getting hurt, you better not watch this movie rather than watching it and commenting all nonsense about it. I'd give it 7 out of 10. With better screenplay i would have given it even a 9! Sorry, Selva, but thanks for this movie: just next time, take some time to make your screenplay perfect.
By Tuesday night, reviews of A.R.Murugadoss's long awaited magnum-opus "7am arivu" had come: Scathing reviews accused that the movie was over-hyped and that it fails to deliver miserably.
However, having booked for "7am arivu" almost a week before all of this, I was upset that I had wasted another 120 bucks of my money for another boring venture. Note: I had watched "Raavanan", "Kaavalan", "Manmadhan Ambu", etc this year, some of them FDFS only to be disappointed!
On Friday, I also watched "Velayudham" at Padmam for Evening Show and felt that it was a nice popcorn entertainment movie and assumed that most people who claimed that "Velayudham" was better than "7am arivu" were correct!
So, I went to "7am arivu" for 7:15 show at Sunday morning expecting myself to be bored and irritated, but hey, to my pleasant surprise, found the movie to be NOT BORING, NOT IRRITATING and NOT MOKKAI..
Let us address the negative critics first before moving to the positives: 1. That the movie was over-hyped:
Very true, from what I hear. But I don't watch too much of TV (yes, even the Diwali special shows included), so I was thankfully masked from most of the hype. But judging from the outcry of so many people, I guess that yes, the movie was probably a little over-hyped, but so what?
I have seen worse movies that were over-hyped (I can name those but that would needlessly start a war of words between "mass hero" fans) and this one definitely is much much better than that!
2. That the storyline was absurd:
True! But hey, its not a documentary about the life of "Bodhidharman" to have a plausible, believable story line. There is an element of fantasy in it and it was, I must say, well executed. Someone as smart as ARM should not have used the word "genetic memory" to explain how "Bodhidharman"'s memory and skills could be inherited by the present day Aravindan (Surya). Someone who understands what that term means would laugh at it.
Apart from that, I found nothing too absurd with the story. If you want reality, go watch Discovery channel! If you come to an escapist medium like Tamil Cinema and ask a hundred questions of how this is fair or not, plausible or not, believable or not is stupidity. Some suapension of disbelief is always necessary!
3. That the graphics were bad in the movie:
Firstly, I request everyone who claims that the graphics were bad in this movie to come and watch the movie in theater before complaining about the graphics. Even "Avatar" would have sucked to you people because you watched a TC rip of the movie in which the graphics were bad!
If, for a budget of 84 crores (that is what i heard! Correct me if I'm wrong!) someone could make a movie with better graphics than this, I would stop writing reviews!
4. That the first half was very boring:
I beg to differ! Time didn't drag on when i watched the movie, either in the first or second half. The biggest plus of the movie was the arresting cinematography by Ravi.K.Chandran. I never felt like walking out of the theater during any of the songs in the first half.
The love sequence between Surya and Sruthi Hassan was not boring, as many reviewers had put it, though it was difficult to believe that a circus artist would walk around in MGM, Skywalk, etc in new clothes at all times.
5. That the zombie-like fight sequence in the second half was funny:
It was deliberately meant to be that way. And the use of CG was near perfect, so stop blaming it! Kudos to ARM for bringing in a zombie like sequence for the first time in tamil film history! :D :P
6. That the use of "Eelam" has been deliberately made to gain people's sympathy and as a marketing gimmickry:
Please shut it, people! All I saw in the movie was a director's genuine angst against the atrocity committed over thousands of people in Lanka. It is ARM's first movie after the LTTE has been overthrown and obviously, he wanted to register his views too! Don't blow it out of proportions!
7. That Sruthi Hassan's acting was flat:
Yes, to this, I completely agree. She seems to have 4 or 5 standard expressions after which all she seems to be able to muster is a stone-face. A real insult to her daddy, if you ask me :D. If she were not as gorgeous as she is, I would actually hurl a few abuses at her! :P
8. That the movie praises Tamil Language when its not needed, and as a marketing gimmickry:
No, I think it is much needed. People who know a little bit of history will understand that the Tamils had a rich cultural heritage. ARM doesn't go overboard with his praises over the Tamil language. It is for the same reason that we misunderstood "Ayirathil Oruvan". A lot of pathetic Tamils couldn't understand the ancient Tamil language spoken in the second half.. Pathetic! Whether ARM praises Tamil language and Tamil culture or not, I am always a proud Tamil. Now that he has, I am just a little more proud!
Now that we have addressed the negatives, all I got to tell you is don't believe the fake reviews of people who haven't watched the movie.
Excellent technicians have played a vital role in making the movie crisp and entertaining. Just, keep your brain at home; go to the theater and enjoy some good popcorn entertainment.
