First time I saw a Tamil movie getting a full house at a multiplex in Bangalore and that too family audiences were flocking in herds with their kids doing justice for the popcorn and snacks which got served at the cafe. Such is the clout of director Rajesh, who has managed to carve out a niche for himself within a short span of time with the masses and classes alike and also not to leave behind the ‘S’ factor - Santhanam.

Director Rajesh in his earlier movie ‘Boss Engira Bhaskaran’ (BEB) drove the plot with the help of comedy, whereas in ‘Ok Ok’ he attempts to drive comedy and tries to create a plot out of it - in short, there was literally no plot. In a nutshell, the story revolves around 3 main characters - Saravanan (Udhayanidhi) chasing his sweetheart, Meera (Hansika) throughout the movie, but fails every time due to circumstantial mishaps and gets bailed out by his friend Partha (Santhanam), who is often used as a pawn in the process. Finally, a predictable happy ending made the plot complete with hardly any logic.

Udhayanidhi has made his debut as an actor and it was a safe bet for him. He has hardly managed to deliver, since a comic script requires spontaneity and a good sense of timing which was missing throughout. While he shook a leg with Hansika, one would feel the amount of effort he had put in for even those consciously minimal steps. On the whole, his performance was ‘ok ok’.

Hansika looked like a plumpy doll and rightly so, since numerous references were made to her physique during the course of the movie by Santhanam and Udhay and it added to the fun. She is a ‘Khushbu’ in the making and I can tell you that she seems to have sufficed the cause.

Santhanam was the USP of the movie. He delivered then and there with his unconventional dialog delivery, chesty body-language, funny one-liners and extraordinary screen presence. But he seemed to get over the top of everything at times and gave a ‘spoofy’ feel to almost all the scenes that he was in.

The others in the cast including Saranya and Alagamperumal as Udhay’s parents have done their bit to sail their way through. Sneha, in a cameo looked quaint.

Music from Harris was again ‘ok ok’ with ‘Kadhal Butterfly’ being the pick of the lot. The other songs were there to just fill in the vacuum for commercial elements and hampered the pace of the movie.

There were some downsides as well. One would feel the length of the movie during the second half, especially when the cameo appearance of Arya was thrusted in, in order to follow suit with the director’s earlier projects. Also, certain scenes could have been done away with, especially the proposal scenes which appeared to be redundant as they seemed to appear throughout.

If wholesome entertainment and comedy without any logic is what your looking for, then ‘Ok Ok’ would have you in splits, though it has not scaled up to the heights of ‘BEB’, which had a better plot. With a comedian who has had a brilliant record of tickling the nerves and a director who has proven his mettle with such plots in the past, it could have been much better, but I certainly didn’t feel any regret for watching this movie after leaving the theater.

Verdict: Above Average

Rating: 3/5