While seeing a bad Tamil movie makes one quite sad, it is particularly depressing when
a likeable,entertaining motion picture in another language is skewered in the name of
remaking it. That is the case with Kaadhal FM, which takes the sweet romantic
comedy The Truth About Cats And Dogs and turns into into an uninteresting,
uninvolving, vulgar film. The movie begins with a 1-minute recap of the story including
the climax and by the time the movie really ended, I was wishing I had stopped watching
after the recap!
Manikandan(Manikandan), a popular radio jockey, has an inferiority complex when it comes
to girls. So he keeps coming up with excuses to not meet Ruchika(Shivani Singh), who has fallen
in love with him after hearing him over the radio. Eventually, Ruchika shows up at his
radio station unannounced but sees his friend Arvind and mistakes him to be Manikandan.
Manikandan, still shy about meeting her, doesn't correct her mistaken impression.
The movie is based on the rather silly foundation of someone falling for someone else after
hearing only the person's voice. It wasn't believable when Murali fell in love with Kousalya
after hearing only her voice in Kaalamellaam Kaadhal Vaazhga. And it isnt believable
here when Shivani falls in love with Manikandan after only hearing him on the radio. The
passage of time has only made the concept less believable and not more. It is totally silly
seeing Shivani scream out her love on the phone to Manikandan, who she has never seen.
The success of a love story depends on how much we get to like the lead characters and
how much we want them to get together. Kaadhal FM makes sure that there is nothing
to like about either its hero or heroine. One one hand we have the heroine who falls in
love with a voice. And on the other is the whiny, wimpy hero who is unable to reveal his
love and instead, washes the heroine's clothes(without her knowing about it!) because of
his silent love for her! So we feel nothing for either of them(though in hindsight, their
silliness does make them perfect for each other!)
Kaadhal FM tries to ape 7/G Rainbow Colony in the
way it uses the opening scene to set our expectations in a certain way and then breaks
them at the end. But while that movie cleverly manipulated us by setting up the opening
scene in a certain way, Kaadhal FM cheats us plain and simple. While the different
start to the movie is interesting, the end(with the director's smug voice-over) is quite
irritating. But on the positive side, the film does end on a surprising note.
Manikandan, one of the boys from Boys , looks nothing like
a hero though his acting is adequate. Even that cannot be said of Shivani Singh, who is
quite weak in both the looks and emoting departments. Karunas starts off well(the response
of the small boy who is torturing a cat, to Karunas is clever and funny) but his track
soon descends into crudeness, apart from being completely unfunny. A couple of takeoffs
on other movies(like Anbe Sivam ) hit the mark though.
Songs by Arvind-Shankar are passable but picturization is rather unimaginative.
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