Yeppa, Yeppa, Yeppappa

I remember a few months ago, I came across this photo on the June R 'Inru Isai Veliyidu' poster. I was so enchated that I stopped my bike to admire it for a minute.

Since the soundtrack was appealing, I added the movie to my list of movies to see. And naturally, when the movie finally came out, I dutifully downloaded it.

What a load of crap it turned out to be!! Put all the tearjerkers of the B&W era together and June R will still put them to shame. So much melodrama and artificiality!!

The characters in this movie exist in a parallel universe, where it is ok for someone to admit an injured stranger on the road to a hospital and start calling that person 'amma' from the next moment onwards. My parallel universe theory is validated by the injured person who immediately accepts her rescuer as a 'ponnu'. When I say immediate, I mean it. Literally!!!

Jyothika and Sarita play the characters in such unconvincing fashion that makes you wonder if they really cared at all. The mother and daughter start having a fun life together, and tragedy strikes in the form of Biju Menon's character who is Sarita's real son. He now wants his mother back and starts behaving 'decently'.

To explain the motive behind this new found affection, we have more unbeliavable characters introduced to us and they do even more unreasonable things. The only performance that deserves a mention comes from Khushbu who plays a lawyer friend of Jo's and intervenes to sort the matter out so that mother and daughter can live without any trouble from the evil son.

It is as if Revathi Varma (the director), made a list of cliches and checked it off a list. For example,

Orphan who grew up to be successful, but yearns for a family - check

Selfish son, who only wants his mother's inheritance - check

Daughter-in-law who prefers modern dresses and frequents a disco - check

Naturally she calls her husband 'Darling' (evil written all over it!) - check

Son's sudden change of heart turning to be more drama - check


I could go on like this, but what for?

Also there is a guest appearance by Surya (5 secs. at the most), which is an affront to the audience. (we have a pathetic story here, but we do have a glimpse of Surya for you.. come see it!!!)

Verdict: Avoid it like the plague!

I can't get enough of this!

Came across another infuriated 'Aadhi' viewer. Where are we heading with all these movies. By now, I am sure all my friends are tired of hearing me trash this movie, but this link surely deserves a reading.

At least the good thing was that the public seems to have rejected the movie outright. There were no comments on the lines of "It was a hit in the X, Y and Z centers."

As a bonus, you also get to read a pictorial review of "Paramasivan" aka "Vasuvin Kodumai part XXI" on the same page.

Paint it Yellow!

Its been a while (3 weeks or so..) since I watched "Rang De Basanti". I sat down to review it the very next day and something or the other kept happening. Not that I would have gotten very far with the exercise. Not that this movie needs recommendation either. If you need to be recommended an Aamir Khan movie, I know you probably wouldn't be here in the first place.

If you get goosebumps watching a movie, what more can you possibly say about it?

I watched it on a friday and followed it up with "Aadhi", "Paramasivam" & "Saravanaa" and I've never felt more wretched about the tamil industry ever.

But I digress. Just watch it. My friend Shiva, in his words, 'never reviews stuff'. But he found this movie worthy of one. You can check his bold 'third eye' on my links section and read about it.

Kushi

My roommate decided to fulfill his burning desire to watch this movie yesterday after he found out that a common friend had a DVD copy. Apparently he had missed (half of) this movie during his college days.

I believe that missing half of a movie is something that shouldn't happen to anyone. So, I gave up my laptop for the noble cause and with nothing better to do on a Friday evening, decided to participate.

Surprisingly, I found a lot wrong with it. This was a movie that I had enjoyed thoroughly with my friends. We had just finished our final year exams and were awaiting our visa dates. We couldn't have aksed for better then. Replete with witty one liners, interesting situations with an equal measure of double entendres and vulgar gyrations from Mumtaj had made sure that it would put S.J. Surya on the list of sure shot directors.

Some movies are just not meant to watched again. Its an honor that can only be bestowed on movies like The Godfather, Micheal Madana Kama Rajan and a few others like Pulp Fiction. Anyway, I made some observations.

Vijay can't act for nuts. Not then, not now and not ever. His dancing is another matter though.

I just love Jyothika on screen, but this time, all I could think of was how heavy her make up (esp her eyelashes) was. The one thing that had caught everyone's attention for good for bad was her body-language and squeaky irritating voice (blame the dubbing artiste). After watching SJ Suryah act in three movies, I am now clear about where the blame should lie.

The songs were very enjoyable to watch (with the exception of 'Kattipudi') reaffirming that it was one of Raju Sundaram's better works.

Also, SJ has a cameo in the movie (he causes Vijay's 'life changing' accident). He definitely looked better then. Just imagining him in 'Kalvanin Kaathali' delivering those romantic lines with a forlorn face, gives me the jitters now. So, I guess I'll stop.

Kalaba Kaadhalan

Call it the effect of watching Aadhi, Paramasivan, Saravanaa & Kalvanin Kaathali back to back, but Kalaba Kaadhalan did come as a whiff of fresh air.

The plot is not entirely new. People are going to call it an inspiration from 'Vaali' and its poor cousin ‘Sheesha’ (hindi), which reversed genders in the Vaali storyline and had Neha Dhupia in the lead. It also ultimately failed at the box office because of the fact that her breasts, however attractive, couldn’t do the acting.

There is a state of mind when we contemplate doing something that we know for sure is taboo. When we are done contemplating about all the consequences and have let the heart rule the mind, we come to a stage where we are done thinking and we start doing it. The protagonist of ‘Kalaba Kaadhalan’, Kanmani is in such a state of mind.

Kanmani’s elder sister Anbarasi has recently married Akilan, who is as perfect as a groom can be in Kanmani’s eyes. She has convinced herself that the best option for her is to marry Akilan. She comes to town to stay with the newly weds on the pretext of ‘attending a computer course’ and after doting on him for several days, bizarrely, approaches him with the idea. What is novel about the whole thing is that, Kanmani is not an evil woman. She has no interest in stealing him from her sister. In her mind, she cannot see what she is doing wrong by asking her sister or Akilan to consent to the arrangement. Akilan is taken aback. He tries to talk her out of it at first but she doesn’t budge one bit. Akilan’s surprise turns later to sympathy and then to outright anger, which is understandable from our point of view, but leaves Kanmani unfazed. These events provide for some interesting scenes and some cliched ones.

The movie then meanders towards an ending, which I have no intention of giving away. Suffice to say that there’s a good chance that you’ll guess wrong.

Arya (or is it ‘Aarya’) plays Akilan, the sophisticated alpha male from the big city with an air of simplicity around him. Arya is still stuck in the ‘chin down, eyeballs up’ mode that he was using effectively in ‘Arinthum Ariyaamalum’. It doesn’t quite work in this movie. He has a few moments but there is nothing earth shattering about his acting. At least, in my humble opinion, this is right kind of material for him. In his last outing in ‘Oru Kallooriyin kadhai’, he was abysmal.

Renuka Menon as Anbarasi has very little to do apart from appearing in a couple of songs. There is not much to talk about her, but surely, the dubbing artiste could have been a little easy on our ears. The squeaking voice is just as irritating as it was in ‘Aa .. Aah’ where, I think the same person had dubbed for Nila.

But the pick of the pack is surely Akshaya who plays Kanmani. We get her character established very early in the movie in a totally unnecessary scene. It’s a dead giveaway of the plot. Her expressive eyes help her a long way in registering a convincing performance and I hope we get to see more of her.

My best wishes go to the directory ‘Igor’ (what a name! and the I is pronounced as in idli) for choosing not to make another ‘Aadhi’, ‘Paramasivan’ or ‘Saravanaa’.

Thanks for coming to the Poojai!

Hi,

Welcome to my blog. Here you will find my opinions on movies. I've been wanting to do this for a long time now, but being the lazy person that I am, its taken all this while to convert my thought into action. I watch a lot of movies and whenever I feel there is something to say about a particular movie, I plan to jot it down here.

I hope this can be a place to objectively discuss movies, not only from India and the US, but the rest of the world (Thanks to DVDs and subtitles).

Once again thanks for visiting.