I have strong reasons to believe that Katha Parayumbol - a great Malayalam movie starring Srinivasan got a similar treatment by the director P.Vasu. Commercialization. That's the only word to describe.
The story is about the life of a barber who lives in a town; and his superstar friend, with whom he had studied in school. The superstar comes to his village to shoot for a movie. The whole village is in a celebration spree to get a glimpse of the star. The moment they get to know about this connection, everyone in the village treats the barber and his family like how they see a person who has won the lottery. In that way, this film is a great representation of how behavior changes. But very soon, the movie starts focusing more on the superstar and the barber goes out of focus.
Pasupathy plays the role of a barber and Meena plays his wife. They try very hard to make ends meet. They don't have money to pay fees for their school going children; live in the most run-down house of the locality and don't even have food to eat, but Meena manages to wear starched saris and foundation / rouge for every scene.Pasupathy does an excellent portrayal of a poor barber. His expression and dialog delivery is superb. I think he has studied Srinivasan's role from the original movie; in detail. But what to do, commercialization of the movie has erased the main theme and his presence. He gets sidelined and then the director suddenly remembers - oh my god, we forgot about this barber guy and then gets him back to focus again. This sequence keeps repeating.
Nayantara - total time pass I would say. No scope for acting. Actually she does nothing worthy in the whole movie. I wonder why she accepted to do this role. Too many close up shots on her body is definitely some eye candy. Rain dance and song is hot. Just before that song everyone wonders, rather they panic, where Nayantara is. Then they show the song. After that no one is bothered about Nayantara.
Coming to the comedy tracks. Vadivel - the vaigai puyal. Although he spends a lot of his screen time beating up his employees, his comedy concept is nice. Santhanam, Livingston, Santhanabharathi, Manobala and a lot others who are part of the comedy really keep you rolling in laughter. At least comedy is what sells in this movie through the first half. It really saves the movie.
Music by GV Prakash Kumar. Quite good but reminds you a lot about songs that you have heard before. One song (Perinba) reminds you about the title song in Veyil. Another song (Nayantara's rain dance song) looks like a slight lift off from a song that was composed by one of the bands in AR Rahman competition "Mirinda - Ooh La La La". The Shankar Mahadevan song about cinema, the way filmdom works and about Superstar, all in a song, is beautiful. The Egyptian theme based song sounds very much like "MJ's Remember the Time".
Last but not the least. Superstar. He is at his best. Apart from the usual scenes about fans and stardom, he comes across in the movie as such a simple person, which is highly commendable. If you've read the book, "The Name is Rajnikanth", then you'll be able to closely relate the last scene of this movie with superstar's life. There was actually a Kuselan in superstar's life; because of whom superstar managed to leave Bangalore and reach Madras in search of a future. But, what the hell. This movie still largely glorifies superstar and not Kuselan.The message that comes out towards the end is about friendship. At the end, the producers could have made a witty remark saying "Happy Friendship Day" considering that the movie was released in August.
Overall: Good time pass for the family.
2 comments:
As always, a good review mama. A small trivia is that: Daler Mahendi sang the song 'Oyam Zarare' and apparently its his debut in Tamil Cinema.
@ muthu - thanks. yeah i found out that it was Daler. what a break for him. he was nowhere for so many years.
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