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Archive for April 2013

Yaaruda Mahesh (Who is Mahesh) - Adult(e)rated!




These days Kollywood directors are careful enough to avoid lewd comments and dialogs in their movies from the watchful eyes of the censor board which is doubly careful after the moral police have taken law in their hands for various reasons ranging from gathering political mileage to tarnishing an actor’s image. Also the new rules laid by the state government have made life tougher for ‘A’ rated movies as they cannot be sold to satellite televisions. At this juncture, a movie with little known actors and a debutante director (Madhan Kumar) has boldly worn the ‘A’ certificate from the censors around its neck like a diamond pendant and that lured me to watch this movie.

Pitched as a romantic comedy, ‘Yaaruda Mahesh’ narrates the romance between Shiva (Sundeep) and Sindhya (Dimple), their life after marriage and how Shiva turns into a new leaf from just being a loafer.

Though the movie was liberal enough to offer sleaze and glamour in equal proportions, it doesn't appeal to a large extent thanks to the below par production values and a limping screenplay. The dialogs that were lewd were sharp at times but bore a cliched hang of things for the major part of the movie.

The movie has been surely made on a shoestring budget as the characters were shown in very many domestic settings except for some songs between the lead pair that were shot in outdoors (not abroad). The movie had fun too, especially that portion by small screen comedians like ‘Robo’ Shankar and co. was truly hilarious, but other than that one should think hard enough in order to remember some really comic punchlines which were few and far between.

The lead pair of Sundeep and Dimple neither had a crackling chemistry nor an endurance to perform. Half the time one can notice their lip sync going awry as neither of them had a Tamil root.

Jegan as the mainstream comedian was somewhat refreshing from the regular ‘Santhanam Special’ these days. But his role was somewhat of a rehash of a friend who gets squeezed between the turmoil and the farce is drawn from such scenarios which has been tried and tested in the past.

Swaminathan as the professor was another stress buster during the first half.

Livingston, Uma Padbanabhan and Srinath were stereotypes.

Music by Gopi Sundar was average as there was hardly any scope;  cinematography and editing departments too suffered a lot at the hands of novices.

The notion to pull out an adult rom-com from the hat was audacious for debutante Madhan Kumar, but he should also concentrate on the script and how it would engage the audiences, who have exponentially developed their taste for good cinema in the past few years.

Verdict: Below Average

Rating: 2/5

Udhayam NH4 (Rising NH4) - Run of the Mill!



Its been quite a while since we have embraced upon an urban love story laced with action. The movie ‘Run’ that got released in 2002 was sort of a trendsetter for the young directors post 2000, in the context of transforming a timid and demure ‘chocolate’ boy (Madhavan) to an action hero by imbibing certain larger than life acts into the narrative and engaging the audiences with some engrossing commercial elements. That worked out pretty well for a while until the concept was overused and became stale. The concept has been resurrected by debutant Manimaran with the help of his mentor, director Vetrimaran who has also penned the screenplay and story for Udhayam NH4 and has also produced it.

In the opening scene, Prabhu (Sidharth) and his cronies are shown planning to abduct Rithika (Ashrita Shetty) from her Bangalore residence to Chennai. The reason behind the abduction, their love story and the consequent actions taken by her wicked political father (Avinash) with a run-of-the-mill climax wherein the couples emerge victorious has been attempted to be depicted in a fresh way that was novel to some extent.

The story was narrated in a series of flashbacks that intentionally had some loose-ends and that got tied up with different characters narrating their part of the story from their own perspective. Another driving force for the movie was KK Menon, the tough ‘Dirty Harry’ kind of a cop who chased the love birds right from the word go and served as a glorified henchmen to the heroine’s father.

Sidharth looked somewhat okay for this role. But for a character of that of a crude guy, who has been brought up in Royapuram, his in-built sophistication was sort of a spoiler. I was expecting this since Vetrimaran had earlier mentioned in an interview that the story was written with Dhanush in mind.

Ashrita Shetty has made a very safe debut. Her voice looked beaten down and moody and somewhat gelled well for her character. She should have been careful enough to show some modulation in her tone or should have asked the dubbing artist to do so.

Avinash as the wicked politician was a bit of a stereotype and had little screen presence.

‘Adukalam’ Naren was almost always shown talking over the phone for the little part that he had.

The new bunch of friends that Sidharth had were somewhat fresh, especially the fatty whose one-liners were relieving to some extent.

Technically I felt the film was a bit beaten down. Especially the editing was poor and in some scenes the characters’ mouth sync went awry. Maybe the use of different languages in the movie, as the story happens in Bangalore, might have been the reason.

Music by GV Prakash was good. ‘Yaaro Ivan’ and ‘Ora Kannala’ were contrasting numbers that appealed.

The movie was a simple action love story that was attempted to be told differently, but the execution had some flaws, thanks to the performances and screenplay. Had this story been handled by the man himself (Vetrimaran), he would have added the inevitable finesse which he always had in all his movies.

Verdict: Worth a Watch!

Rating: 2.5/5

Settai (Prank) - Flat Belly!



The Bollywood blockbuster, ‘Delhi Belly’ that released a couple of years back, tested the realms of Indian cinema with its bold, crass and crude dialogs that was lapped up by today’s youth. It proved to be a benchmark for so many other Bollywood movies that tried to catch and match up with it. In an attempt to open up and test unexplored territory, Kollywood has woven its own brand of ‘neat film’ aesthetics to a ‘heavily’ toned down version of the original movie and have presented it to us in the form of ‘Settai’.


Directed by R.Kannan, Settai is a cat and mouse game between a group of friends and a diamond mafia that attempts to recover their diamonds that goes places before ending up nowhere. ‘Delhi Belly’ had a simple story and a great screenplay and Settai has borrowed only the story line while the screenplay has been ‘heavily’ worked in order to suit the Tamil sensibilities.


I would first like to divide the audiences who might be watching this movie into 2 groups - the first one would be the ones who have watched Delhi Belly and the second one are those who haven’t. The movie would certainly not be appealing to the first category of audiences, while the second category might find the proceedings mildly engaging and might even relish some genuinely funny moments that were borrowed and retained from the original.

Arya, the protagonist was convincing as ‘JK’, the broody young journalist who runs behind his girl, before realizing that his heart is planted elsewhere.

Hansika as the dumb air hostess was a poor choice, since she was dumber in the role and was not even half as good as Shehnaz who was cast in the original.

Another disappointment was Anjali who was cast in a free-spirited female journalist’s role. ‘Delhi Belly’ had that role played by an enterprising Poorna Jagannath, who was brilliant to say the least!

Santhanam as the ‘fart master’ was surprisingly not-so-impressive. Its just that we are seeing more of him these days as every second film which has comedy, has Santhanam in it and that might be the reason.

Premji was made insignificant and has not done justice for his role even after having a solo number to his name.
Nasser and Co. as the mafia members were just sleepwalking and their performances were a far cry from the one that was made memorable by Vijay Raaz and Co. in the original.

Music by Thaman was average and cinematography by Muthiah stood out only during the songs in the foreign locales.

Leo John Paul’s editing was disappointing as two songs that were not even in the vicinity of the screenplay was forcefully thrust in, in order to satisfy the ego of the stars involved rather than to satisfy the screenplay; scissoring them would have made the proceedings much crisper keeping the movie’s length close to its original at 90 minutes, but now it stretches for 30 more minutes!

R.Kannan who made a sorry remake of ‘Jab We Met’ a few years back has made a second attempt at remaking another Bollywood biggie, which is far better, but the choice of remake has let him down this time. Remaking a movie like Delhi Belly into a neat family entertainer requires a great mastery in screenplay writing combined with an immaculate sense of humor. He seems to lack both and has landed up with a half-hearted attempt that doesn’t do justice for both the original and its remake.

Verdict: Half-hearted Attempt!

Rating: For those who have watched 'Delhi Belly' - 1/5; Others - 2.5/5