It had to be a pretty long ride for 20 odd kms from Adyar to Chetpet Sangam cinemas to catch the night show with maintaining a manageable speed in the still traffic infested Radhakrishnan and Nungambakkam high roads at 9.30 pm.
I still have doubts if the movie had really been worth all these nocturnal efforts.the office guys had insisted that we all hit this movie( some movie for that matter for it had been a pretty long time since we had all hit theatres together) and having no success to secure reservation in the nearer Sathyam / Inox / Udyam we had really no other choice.
The race had already started when we were entering and managed to settle down atlast when it was about to end. Arya was racing in his auto and closing in on the only other racer and couple of more minutes with the "drrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr." sounds of the vehicles before he hits the finish line and wins.
This is what the movie is centred on.Arya(Chandru) is an indolent auto driver, a passionist for racing and speed driving. Lal(Bigle - I last saw him playing the villain in Sandakozhi) the auto mechanic and Arya are thick buddies. The arc rival of this duo is the kooky Vijay Antony( Son of a gun) and it is with him and his accomplices the Arya gang have bet races time and again in the movie . Arya had to pay for his long impending debts for the Autorickshaw he possesses and bets with the SOG gang in hoping to earn a lumpsome. Meantime he starts romancing Pooja, the Biriyani shop girl . He sets about for the race with Bigle, who had fine tuned his auto for the event, but fails miserably, being disturbed by the altercation he had with Pooja the earlier day when she insists for marriage.
Eventually Bigle and Arya play the blame game and knowing Arya had indeed been romancing Pooja, the prospective alliance of Bigle they quarrel and split. They endure further hardships .Bigle losing his mechanic shed to SOG and Arya losing his auto unable to repay his debts and bearing the brunt of playing a private auto driver and later getting locked up for smashing up the police inspector’s private auto in an accident. Bigle comes to his rescue, the friends unite again, and set about all again for a contest again with SOG and gang.
The way in which the whole movie had been handled and the situations in the screenplay treated deserves a commendation for the Director - couple Pushkar and Gayathri. Its just effervescent and light hearted humor mostly throughout. Especially mentioning the cranky villain vijay antony, there are splits everytime he delivers his Nellai slanged dialogues.All his are " galeej " dialogues, sometimes with double entendres and sometimes straight unparliamentary quip, with censor chip.There is nothing noteworthy about the performances of Arya or pooja for the movie doesn’t at all demand any exceptional performances from the cast. They just do good with their lazy strides and casual deliveries.Neither there is anything significant about the music.
The genre of this movie, I should say, is just like "Chennai-28". But it fails to create an impression, unlike Chennai - 28 where the theme was laid on something that vast majority of the viewers themselves associated with. a cricket match.We have all been part and fan of the big game some way or the other so the theme and the plot structured around it just struck well. But something like autoracing? No sir.and even the other aspects of the movie seem to rely upon auto, auto and nothing else. Or maybe it would have attained a complete sketch if there had been some more capacity/depth added to the friendship/romance aspects with those associations of the sport given its own facts, runs and credits.The imbalance is not because of just introducing a plethora of elements but just the amount to which they were filled with.
"Oram Po" may not be a must see movie.But if you want something different from the stereotyped machoism and heroism stuffed movies filled in with crass comedy tracks in the name of humor, you should hit this.Cool stuff, offering a few splits here and there if not a hearty laugh all the way to end.