Enadhu?? Mahatma Gandhi sethutaara?

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Goa not Go'a?

If you are asked to line-up Venkat Prabu's movies in the order of its quality, it is simple. Just list them in the chronological order. There was an innocence with Chennai28 because of the obvious amateurish treatment of the subject that was fun to watch. With Saroja, he took the 'amateurishness ' to the next level with a serious and taut screen play in the 2nd half of the movie. With two hits and the weight of expectations, Venkat Prabu should have realized he can no longer hide behind that tag.

What I could not comprehend was if it was meant to be a full length spoof or a movie like Saroja where real story was interspersed with fun. If it is the former the movie appears undercooked and if it is the latter it grossly fails due to the thin screenplay that drags on.

So there are these three youths: Ramarajan, Vinayagam and Saamikannu from a village. They are summoned for the panchayat. The father of these youths are played by Vijayakumar, Chandrasekhar and (yes!) Shanmuga Sundaram. They have fought the nefarious activities of a local mirazdar (played by Anand Raj). A funny bit in which our three do-gooders fight the men of Anand Raj wearing shirt & pant with wigs on their heads is shown. So the scene goes back and forth in to give a brief glimpses of everyone's character. Saamikannu was conceived with divine blessing which makes him a 'theiva kuzhandhai' for the village. He grows in a highly confined environment where in he is restricted from enjoying life like the rest of his village friends. This makes him yearn for a freedom and the taste of life outside the village. VInayagam just wants to go to Americaa while Ramarajan is shown as a modern day Don Juan. So ultimately these three hatch a plot to escape from the village when they have specifically forbidden to do so.
They go to Madurai to see a friend Azhagar. But they learn Azhagar, the dark colored villager, is getting married to a vellaikaarachi. Azhagar tells them he met her at Goa, which is described in the movie as a paradise on earth.

So our trio decide to go to Goa, find a vellakarachi and make her fall in love with them and marry her and settle in a foreign country. The rest of the plot (?) surrounds this aim. They meet Danny (played by Sampath) and Jack (Aravind Akash) at Goa. They are a gay couple and offer a place to live in Goa while embarking on their search for white women. Now, Sampath is an excellent actor. He manages to pull off the role somehow. He neither overdid the kuzhayara part that has become synonymous with a gay nor does he fail miserably in that fake accent. If at all he (or Aravind) irritates you at any point of the movie it is not because of their acting but because of some of the long and unnecessarily dragging scenes involving them.

If there is anything that the Director has managed to pull off perfectly, it has to be the choice of the female cast in the movie! Melannie Marie, who is the love interest of Saamikannu, is undeniably cute while Piaa Bajpai is (ahem..). Sneha, the cunning and seductive business entrepreneur, looks good too inspite of the multiple folds in her neck.

Hopefully, references to Subramaniyapuram stops with this movie. The number of times Premji Amaran shakes his head ala Jai in Subramaniyapuram takes away the initial amusement it caused. In an effort to surprise the audience with the unexpected, I think the Director attempts some stuff that falls flat. If you manage to take the audience off their guard you should let them relish that moment and move on to the next scene instead of rubbing in the same scene (the gay couple sequences being a point in case). The climax speeds up like Ocean's Eleven with a heist planned to steal the jewels that is locked up in Sneha's ship. But stops dead when Ramarajan falls on Sneha's feet. Less said about the blink-and-you-miss appearance of Nayanthara and the closing scene of blood coming from Sombu's nose the better. Things are not made any better with the acknowledgement of Sombu's guest appearance with a Little Superstar as prefix to his name. Oh well if you can Yuvan Shankar Raja as Little Isaignani, then....

So anyway, the movie comes off as a masala with no pretentions but does not leave the audience with any satisfaction either.

P.S.: Sampath's portrayal of the gay character somehow kept reminding me of Vikram's Ambi and the CBI aapicer role in Kandhasaamy. Hmmm.

P.S.:2: Indha padathuku Soundharya 3crores kadan vaanginadhu romba adhigam. Andha 3crores, which is picha kaasu for her appa, kooda thirupi tharaama settu pasanga case podra alavuku vechukardhu adha vida romba too much.

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My HR is just like Obama. He spoke to me for about half an hour but at the end of it, I forgot what I went to see him for and also could not remember if he told me anything new.

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Sorgame endraalum...

It is that time of the year again: when the GRT calendar on the wall gets replaced as the month of Maargazhi draws to an end. Time to replace the Aircel simcard with a seemai naatu sim card. Chennai got more than its normal share of rains this month. Tried to convince paati and others that 22C is not cold at all and maargazhi pani is nothing compared to -20C, only to catch the cold several times and have them rebuke me for acting like a know-all.

A deep sense of regret would fill the mind as the flight takes off, as the separation from all that is home for an unknown period along with the periodic beepings of the in-deck announcement adds to the melancholy. Like a maniac, I ate at all places I knew from Mambalam to Adyar and went to so many places in the last one month to satisfy my longings of the last one year. And the cycle would continue for the next as well.

A dying city awaits me, welcoming me probably with a feet of snow.

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SPB!

While waiting in Chennai airport and looking at the flight departure time get postponed once again in the continuously changing time display, I was feeling bored and sleepy. It was then I heard a voice behind me say, "Excuse me, please". Moving aside for the person to go past me I was more than surprised to see none other than SPB, dressed in his usual white pant with a generously sized brown shirt.

I was hesitant to talk to him immediately because of the crowd but soon people slowly started making a beeline to him and so I summed up the courage. He was polite with a benevolent smile and gave me his autograph. But then he took it back and said he is still stuck with the past year and changed it to 2010. He was with a man in white shirt & white pant and I believe he was the famous erstwhile Director SP Muthuraman.

Woohoo!

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Though it is redundant on my part to state it, my recent stay in Bangalore reinforces my belief that there is no better place than Chennai!

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First, it was DoKoMo during the cricket matches. Then Vijay started selling CocaCola every 5 minutes in each channel with ad breaks spread out such a way that whenever you switch channels you will see the ad in some channel. Now, Sun Network is killing everyone with Vettaikaran trailer every 2 minutes in all of its 1,43,724 channels it has on air as of date.

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Vettaikaran

Just like the protagonist of the movie District-9 realizes to his horror that he is slowly transforming into an alien, I have been discovering my tolerance bordering on penchant for Vijay’s movies. I really wanted to see Vettaikaran at Sathyam because I have never seen a Vijay movie in theater (just one of the several justifications I had to give to people to have them accompany me to the movie).

I heard of several bad reviews about the movie, mostly hearsay. So I had rock-bottom expectations when I went for the movie but I actually ended up liking the movie. I am not sure if going with a low expectation helped or maybe it was because that idiot Prabudeva was not the Director again.

Ravi (Vijay) is struggling to pass Plus-Two examinations while he aspires to become an IPS officer on the footsteps of the famous encounter specialist Devaraj. The movie opens with a scene on a Chennai suburban train (any movie that starts off with a scene on the Chennai trains have to be good, no?) when Devaraj shoots a thug named Sura-Baskar. This sets off a series of events which are revealed later.

Ravi hails from Thoothukudi and finally passes +2 exams after 4 attempts. He then leaves for Chennai to pursue his education in the same college in which Devaraj studied. He wants to model every aspect of his life after Devaraj and was looking to drive an auto for living. The first day of his college makes him an instant good friend of Uma whose father (played by Maanicka Vinayagam) rents out vehicles. Ravi gets an auto from him out of which he makes his living and pays for his education. Chella is a local goon and is the son of Vedhanayagam, played by Salim Ghouse (Sakkara Gounder of Chinna Gounder fame). Chella sets his eyes on Uma, while indulging in his spree of coercing women who catch his attention to come to him. This forces Uma’s father to flee from the city along with his daughter. On hearing this, an infuriated Ravi, goes to Chella’s place and thrashes Chella and his men in the first fight of the movie. Incidentally, this comes only after an hour and a half of the movie has elapsed!

The movie picks up pace after that. Ravi has to face-off with Vedhanayagam which forms the rest of the movie. It is revealed that Vedhanayagam had killed Devaraj’s wife and son and also blinded him rendering him harmless. Ravi gets the help of Devaraj and some of his friends from his town join hands and he creates a mini-empire for himself which usurps Vedhanayagam’s power regime. An emasculated Vedhanayagan tries to regain control leading to the climax in which Ravi has Vedhanayagam killed, not by his own hands but by that of Devaraj and has the blame subtly forced on to one of Vedhanayagam’s henchmen. The movie closes with Ravi telling Devaraj that he has realized that he does not need to become an IPS officer to do what he always wanted to do because everybody has a bit of policeman inside them and they only have to make sure that inner self is allowed to function. Salim's acting is a relief from the stereotypical villainy of Prakash Raj in recent Vijay movies. The absence of Nayanthara and Trisha (and Vadivelu) also raises the bar.

As far as Direction goes, this is by far the best Vijay movie in recent times (which includes trash like Kuruvi, Pokkiri, Villu etc.). Notably, there is neither an formulaic intro song nor an intro fight. The inherent idiosyncracies, the drawling dialogues rendered by Vijay (that was most likely introduced to him by Prabudeva), the notorious ‘ennungna?’ are all absent in this movie.The fact that Vijay breaks down and cries when his close friend is tortured to death when the easier alternative would have been to give a close-up of is reddening eyes and sparks emanating from his footsteps are some of the deft handling by the Director that makes this movie different and tolerable. One could draw parallels to previous movies such as Baasha, Bheema to name a few but it is ok. In order to fully justify the movie experience I have to state that this movie is far better than Kandaswamy & Aadhavan. The only similarity with the other two movie stops with Vettaikaran stretching to slightly longer than 3hours. This could have been avoided by trimming a few dragging scenes towards the climax.

The soundtracks are decent in the movie. The song ‘Naan Adicha’ is not a great number but the visuals and the context justifies the song. ‘Puli Urumudhu’ is a typical hero-worshipping song sans any frills because everybody would already have a clear imagination of how the song would look. The BGMs were also good, especially the music bit from the song ‘Karigalan’ which is used often as a romantic interlude and the hero’s run-ins with his lady love (played by Anushka Shetty). Nothing much to be said about Anushka’s role except that her ‘nothing is impossible’ dressing beliefs in Telugu movies are left unexplored by the Director & Costume Designer until the final duet song ‘En Uchimandai’. Sound editing was below average as well. The DTS mixing has been grossly underutilized by the editor who has decided that increasing the volume up a few notches would be a good substitute for using the different audio channels. This results in a really noisy climax where one loses count of the number of gunshots and glasses breaking.

The editing was below average, expected for a movie like this, but that does not mean two ‘dreamy’ duet songs have to be immediately followed by scene in which villains with mutilated faces open their eyes in hospital (ably aided by a close-up shot and a crashing metallic BGM). Some comedy scenes were totally artificial (such as supposedly humorous scene with Delhi Ganesh, who plays Ravi’s father) and some blended well with the movie. Fortunately, there was no distracting separate comedy track that includes a Vadivelu or Vivek who end up taking up half hour of the screen time for themselves.

Overall, if you do not expect much other than average entertainment this is a movie worth seeing. And for Vijay, whose career badly needed a jumpstart after the recent failures, this would be a good break.

P.S.: Now that a movie with low expectations has fared better, I am trying to see Avatar that is being over-hyped in all channels. Since I am prejudiced already against the movie, let me see how it fares.

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On behalf of our auto stand, I am pleased to release an update to our official kanavu kanni list. Post Aadhavan, Nayanthara is dropped unceremoniously to the 3rd position from her currently held 1st position which is being taken over by Tamanna. Chennai Mangai Thirisa continues to be in 2nd. List is rounded off by another Palaghat Iyer, Priyamani at 4.
Podungada pudhu cut out.... engal kanavu kanni Tamanna vaazhga vaazha...

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At this rate, if Sachin announces retirement from cricket, National Govtu will declare a week's mourning even as all arai-vekaadu reporters of indhi channels talk incessantly about his great deeds like Duracell's drum-beating rabbit.

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