Manmadhan Anbu - A ridiculous waste of talent and resources

The latest offering from Kamal haasan and Director KS Ravikumar had everything going for it

• A pedigree of succesful and funny movies - Avvai Shanmugi, Thenali, Panchathantiram
• An enviable star cast - Kamal, Trisha, Madhavan, Sangeetha, Ramesh Aravind, Urvasi,  Usha Uthup and in a guest role, Surya
• The marketing of the movie including the promos made it clear that it is going to be a visual treat covering Europe including a cruise.
• A powerful production banner which is owned by the son of the second most powerful person in the state. However, considering that this person or his cousin pretty much produce every movie these days, it might not be such a USP after all. Nevertheless this was a sure indication that cost would not be a constraint for the film and that it would definitely be an extravagnaza.

Considering this powerful background, the film turns out to be a major disappointment. The first half of the movie is relatively palatable with the gradual build up of the plot - A jealous &rich boyfriend (Madhavan) of a major movie star (Trisha) sends a detective & ex-army major (Kamal) to figure out if Trisha is going to be doing something naughty on an European vacation, that she is enjoying with her childhood friend & now divorced single mother of two (Sangeetha). The major is undertaking this trip to help his friend (Ramesh Aravind) who is suffering from cancer. Amidst a slew of funny one-liners and slapstick comedy, the plot slowly but surely leads to an interesting twist by the time of intermission.  As i went out to get some popcorn from the stalls at mayajaal, I was still looking forward to how things would shape up from then on.

Nothing however could have prepared me for the ridiculous fare that took place after intermission. It was almost like the script-writer and director were so caught up in the beauty of Europe that they forgot their primary job. None of the actions of the characters really make any sense leading to the absolutely ridiculous climax. I have never been disappointed by a Kamal movie ever since he started his experimentation with the epic Nayagan in the late 80s. Have thoroughly enjoyed all the different genres that he has attempted (Anbe Sivam, Guna, Michal Madana Kama Rajan, Apoorva Sagotharargal, Hey Ram, Dasavatharam, Indian, Unnai Pol Oruvan to name a few). With this record, i just could not undertand how Kamal could have allowed this ridicuous fare to have been made. There is a song which is supposed to have been uniquely picturised which outlined Kamal's flashback but it left us quite confused and with a headache at the end of it.

Now coming to the positives

• For those of us who are not that lucky to go on an European tour, we do indeed get a visual treat.
• Trisha, who is never really renowned for powerpacked performances probably seems the only sane character in the entire movie through her simple portrayal.
• The slapstick comedy does work in parts. You might actually enjoy it if you ignore the lacklustre script.

I hope that the Ulaganayagan realises that he has a reputation to live upto and makes sure that he does not tread the path what his supposed successors seem to be doing these days. As far as i am concerned, this fare is money down the drain.

Tamil Cinema's coming of Age - hope the spark continues

This year's Gandhi Jayanthi (october 2nd) found my wife and i watching 2 brand new movies at the Theatre, one after the other (yes, we decided to do some crazy stuff) and to our luck found ourselves thoroughly satisfied with both of them. Considering that tamil cinema in recent times has been littered with depressingly crass, mediocre and senseless movies (Kanthasamy, Ninaithale Innikum to name a couple) which ended up getting much fanfare sheerly through a combination of aggressive marketing and some star power, we found ourselves thoroughly surprised. The two movies that we saw were Eeram and Unnai Pol Oruvan (the remake of the much critcally acclaimed " A Wednesday"). The fact that i enjoyed most about either of them was the fact that neither of them had any stupid gravity-defying fights, crass item numbers or irrelevant comedy sequences, which over time, despite their "insult to intelligence" characteristics have become to dominate tamil cinema over the last couple of decades.

Eeram is a brilliantly shot and innovatively told murder mystery. The director, a Film institue gold medallist clearly had the audience engrossed through this unusual movie through a combination of brilliant camerawork, logical & clear story-telling as well as employing little-known actors (though i am sure that all the key characters should have a bright future if they chose their projects wisely). Every scene in the story depicts the wetness (Eeram means wetness in Tamil) with water being vividly shown in some form or the other. Another novelty pertains to showing a red-colored wet object to highlight the onset of the next murder is very clever. The color of the frames depicts the dark nature of the story very well. The climax could have been thought through a little more but is nevertheless smart in its own way. Director shankar has once again revealed his keen eye in identifying different stories and sponsoring them to unravel fresh talent into the industry.

Unnai Pol Oruvan is an outstanding story of how a common man holds the entire Chennai police administration to ransom for an entire day to administer a very different form of social justice. The ensemble of brilliant senior actors including Kamal Hassan and Mohanlal as well a bunch of fresh-faced new comers combined with a fast moving story line (the entire hardly lasts for an hour and a half) keeps the audience spell bound. The police officers shown here are not the stereotyped caricatures that we have been used to. The challenges and difficulties that they face in a typical day are depicted very realistically. The sharp and witty discussions between the police commissionar and the Chief Secretaty as well as the hard-hitting chats between the common man and the commissionar (not to mention the hillarious Telemarketing call that frustrates the commissionar while lightening the grim mood) are very realistic and entertaining.

I sincerely hope that 2009 heralds the onset of a new and sensible year in Tamil Cinema and that we do get to see more of these masterpieces in the days to come.

Varanam Aayiram - Movie Review

The wife and i spent yet another friday evening at the sathyam multiplex complex catching up on famed director Gautham menon's latest offering staring his favourite hero surya. The promos of the movie were pretty cool showing surya in various getups including one with a awesome six-pack. The movie had also been in the news for various things including the fact that it was for 2-years in the making, financial problems with the rights being ultimately purchased by the infamous MK Azhagiri , the son of the Tamilnadu chief minister and its final foray into the theatres was eagerly expected. The music by Harris Jayaraj was already a hit with a number of soothing pleasant numbers.

At the end of the unusually long film (about 3.5 hours), i would say that it is a pretty good effort overall though by the time, we reached the end, most of the guys in the theatre including myself were yawning and this was not certainly due to the fact that it was 2:00 AM in the morning. The film tracks the life of Major surya who is embarking on an important mission to rescue a journalist who is held by terrorists and who has just been informed that his father krishnan (surya again) has just passed away after a fight with cancer. Krishnan has been surya's hero right from childhood and they have shared a close bond over the years. The film tracks the time from the glorious 70s when a smart young college goer, krishnan woos his college mate malini (Simran with a hideous wig) and marries her. Subsequent scenes then turn their attention on to the adventures of their son Surya who cruises through his life right from being a naughty teenager to a fun-loving college goer to his romances/failures and subsequently Surya discovering a mission for himself in life. A number of characters/ events are throw into the mix including: Sameera Reddy as the smart, acadmically brilliant Meghna who sweeps Surya off his feet in their fist meeting itself, which leads to a cute albeit cinematic romance which ends in a terrible tragedy; Divya Spandana as the calm neighbour pining for Surya and who ultimately marries him; the romance/love between Krishnan and malini as they help their son navigate through life etc.,

At the end, one was left wondering at a couple of things. Surya's outstanding performance in changing everything from his body language to his physical side in conveying the different characters. Rememeber Krishnan and Surya are characters essentially being essayed by the same actor but they have to appear on the same frame on a number of occassions. Think about the 6-pack clad Major surya and the aging Krishnan who can hardly talk as cancer grips him talking to each other in a single scene. The movie is an example for brilliant editing and the fact that surya has to transform himself into a number of characters itself justifies the 2-year long wait. Nevertheless, the movie was a wee bit too long and a number of things like surya's foray into drugs due to Meghna's tragedy, the susequent helping in the rescue of a friend's child from terrorists etc., only serve to elongate the story without any meaningful reason. Also the movie focusses little on surya's sister as all the action seems to be around Surya and a little more diligence in this angle would have aided the storyline better. This further frustrates the audience as an end seems nowhere in sight. The movie cannot expect a repeat audience and will be a product that can be consumed just about once.

All the actors do justice to their roles. Surya is outstanding, Sameera fits the role to a glove, Divya spandana is adequate and Simran is just fabulous as the ageing mother/wife (her natural outburst when krishnan is diagnosed with cancer is lovely and extremely natural) though her makeup as a college student was just plain hideous. Also this is one movie where the last line in the movie explains the rationale for the title as the family comes to terms with Krishnan's death (describing krishnan as the person who can tackle a thousand elephants with each elephant being linked to a new problem in life and who comes out succesful). Gautham who has been mentioning that this movie is a tribute to his own father who has been his mentor in life has done a competent job, however the issues in the movie especially the length of the movie are not going to set the box-office on fire. Gautham is defiintley one of our best directors with some really brilliant movies and i am looking forward to him learning from his mistakes and giving us some classics in the days to come. And surya does stand alone as the only beacon to the futue of tamil cinema as the only really talented hero from the current pack who really has the potential to become an extraodinary actor (and who does not get tied to the image hangover)

Fashion - Is Madhur Bhandarkar becoming stereotypical?

My wife and i burnt some midnight oil yesterday catching up on the latest "Fashion" in town. For a night show at the Inox in Chennai, it was houseful revealing that Madhur Bhandarkar has built up quite a strong brand loyalty among the multiplex goers. I have been impressed with his Page-3, Corporate as well as Traffic signal (i havent seen Chandni Bar yet) and was eagerly looking forward to Fashion - his latest biopic on cracking open the insides/travails/gliterrati of this industry. At the end of 3 hours (peperred with some bad nachos at the counter and some moderate popcorn), i could not relate to Madhur's creation as much as the earlier ones. It is quite possible that this is a world little understood by the likes of myself with middle-class upbringing and whose ambitions/dreams still fall within the realms of having a normal, non-glamorous existence.

There is also a strong possibility that we have got used to madhur's story-telling technique which seems to falling into a pattern - Giving an initial sneak preview of the industry, the protoganist with either dreams or idealistic views who quickly understands that all that glitters is not gold and who initially finds caring gay/straight friends (she does indulge in a romance with one of them which breaks as she catapults into stardom) and the gradual sucking of the protoganist into the muck (at least of one of whose adventures will shock us) and finally nirvana. To a large extent, all the 3 of his earlier movies seem to follow this pattern and Fashion seems to follow the trend. Meghna Mathur (potrayed by Priyanka Chopra), the starry eyed, spunky middle-class lass from Chandigarh whose journey into the Fashionable circles of mumbai is the protagonist and the movie diligently follows this journey. A standout performance by Kangana Ranaut as the hotshot model Shonali Gujral who gets sucked into the muck of the industry is the highlight of the movie. This resonates strongly with the recent discovery of a model who was found begging in the streets of Delhi.

Overall, all the ingredients were around but somehow the overall dish did not taste as well not because it was not well made but because we have got used to the taste. I can see a clear pattern emerging between characters of Meghna Mathur, Madhavi Sharma (Page 3), Silsila (Traffic Signal) and Nishigandha Dasgupta (Corporate). I am still a big fan of madhur who can be assured that i will definitely buy tickets for his next movie but i would like him to re-invent himself as he strives to be the most intelligent director that bollywood has seen for a long time.

Dasavatharam - Almost a Magnum Opus by an Indian Genius

Recently, my wife and i went out to watch this attempted masterpiece at the INOX - one of chennai's attempts at Multiplexing the cinema goer's experience. We went to watch this during our favourite timing (9:00 AM on Saturday) but it was quite a full house. We ended up a few minutes late but still in time to catch most of this fast paced movie where India's greatest actor, Dr. Kamalahasan has attempted to dorn 10 different character roles. Other than 1 character which is based in the 12th century, the rest of the characters are set in contemporary times and keep constantly bumping into each other. Of course, some of the characters could have been played by anybody and have a thin thread to the overall story but the attempt is to get to Ten to give some credulence to the story's title.

A mish-mash of concepts bundled in this attempted sci-fi flick include

• Chaos theory and its application in contemporary philosophy where one presumes every event in the universe is connected to every other event and there is a method in the madness after all
• Theism or rather, Kamal's thoughts on the subject. As a matter of fact, i could resonate with Kamal's last word on the subject in the climax. By the way, there was nothing out there that would have hurt any religious sentiments unless one is a psychopath.
• The tsunami of 2004 - where this has been portrayed as nature's way of averting an even larger crisis.
• Biotechnology and its misuse
• Illegal sand quarying in Tamilnadu - which is indeed a worrying thing today where the urban elitist populace including me contribute to deprivation of natural resources in our bid to become more opulent at least in monetary terms and end up buying additional shelters than what we need.

By the time, we got to the finish, though one was amazed at Kamal's versatility and his dedication to his craft (whether it be the bumbling India RAW Agent - who can speak 5 languages in Telugu, the CIA Assassin, the Iyengar priest at the begining or the Dalit who is a genuine social worker, the portrayals were just breathtaking and for a few minutes, one tends to forget that they are all being performed by one person), one was definitely left wondering at how much more could have been accomplished. Also, the heroine's childish portrayal as well as the ability of the main hero character and the heroine to go through multiple accidents including an overturned lorry and escape absolutely unscathed were too juvenile in their portrayal.

Overall, it was definitely a magnum opus by India's greatest Film personality and is laudable for the effort that has gone in. Well almost....

Veerasamy - the absolute nadir in Tamil movies

Last sunday, Sun TV took the honour of unleashing Veerasamy - the T. Rajenther made classic on the Tamil public through the medium of Television. Without a doubt, it is the most pathetic movie ever made. A movie intended to be a tear jerking classic turned out to be one of the best comedy movies through a combination of unbelievably crappy casting, extraodinarily poor direction and above all, absolutely pathetic acting. I took a few minutes to collect the various reviews that have been published on this classic to give you a view on this calamity. I would strongly recommend this movie to any person who is depressed and wants to be cheered up.

Review by BBthots ( a balanced review)

Review by Dandanaka (this guy writes the best reviews ever and this is a 8-part classic review)

Senthil's wordpress

Mouthshut Review