What a powerful effect Kaadhalukku Mariyaadhai has had on tamil cinema?! The blockbuster single-handedly altered
the nature of cini-romance from a point where it was all-conquering to a point where affection towards one's family
takes precedence over love. The aftershocks of that movie have still not subsided as seen by the the recent spate of movies
like Poovellaam Kaettuppaar , Minsaara Kannaa and
Jodi with the same theme. Close on their heels comes another one. But thankfully, the treatment here
is a little different as the lovers themselves don't do much and their actions take a backseat to the machinations of an
older man to get them together.
The older man(Sivaji), a writer specialising in love stories, is hero Aravind's(Ajay) grandfather. His brother(M.N.Nambiar)
lives in Bombay with his daughter(Ambika) and son-in-law Ranganathan(Raghuvaran). They have 3 daughters. Sivaji's action
during the marriage of the eldest daughter earns him the enmity of everyone in her family. However romance blooms between
Aravind and the second daughter Priya(Malavika). Ranganathan is devastated by the behaviour of his eldest daughter and seeing
his condition, Priya decides to sacrifice her love. Sivaji is not willing to accept this and goes about trying to get them
together.
The movie starts off promisingly with well-maintained suspense about Sivaji's involvement in the oldest girl's marriage.
But the way he goes about implementing his plan is unreasonable. He goes about doing in public something that should've been
taken care of in a private forum. While the director was probably shooting for generating sympathy for Sivaji, this scene
had the opposite effect on me and I fully understood Raghuvaran's anger. There is also a pivotal secret revealed towards the
end of the movie which supposedly justifies Sivaji's actions but it just served to stress why the whole matter should've
been taken care of in private. But the relationship between the grandfather and grandson is well brought out.
There are two main elements in the story. The romance between the lead pair and the tactics employed by the grandfather to
make it succeed. Both these have their faults. The romance is too fleeting to make any kind of an impact. All it takes
for the heroine to fall in love with the hero is one scene where he describes when, according to him, a girl is beautiful.
We never get a chance to connect with them or appreciate their romance.
Once the romance is settled, the focus shifts to the grandfather but unfortunately, his actions are neither clever nor
interesting. Sivaji has the same job that he did in Mannavaru Chinnavaru . There he
plotted to rejoin Arjun and Soundarya while here he plots to unite Ajay and Malavika. The responses of Nambiar to a couple
of Sivaji's actions evoke some chuckles but thats as far as it goes. There is lots of comic potential in many of the scenes
but these have not been fully exploited. It is possible to make things interesting with oldies in the cast, as was shown in
Rojavanam , but thats not the case here.
One factor that rescues the tedium is the comedy. Chinni Jayanth has sole responsibility for the comedy and he makes full use
of it. With his unique dialog delivery full of "gilpas", laughs are guaranteed whenever he is in the scene. His frequent facial
contortions when confused by Sivaji's actions are undeniably comical and both his actions and the dialogs peak in the "Avvai
Shanmugi" scene.
Sivaji hogs most of the frames leaving little for Ajay and Malavika to do. But he does give a restrained performance without
overacting too much. Newcomer Ajay has the right height and build for a hero but not the right looks. His diction also leaves
a lot to be desired with his inability to pronounce the "zha" sound. So though he dances and fights well, I don't think Vijay,
Ajith or Prashanth have anything to be worried about. Malavika hasn't shown much improvement over her wooden performance in
Aanandha Poongaatre . Raghuvaran lends a dignity, which I'm not sure is fully
deserved, to the movie. Vidyasagar shows his talent in the Ettil Azhagu... but the song sequences are generally not very
imaginatively or innovatively picturised.
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