When I was last in chennai...
i saw the poster of this movie telling me tht this movie has finally inched to 100 days.
but this has to be considered definitely as a flop compared to the track record of shankar.
i browsed thru the reviews already written and was not surprised to the mixed reactions.....
and I m wrting mine now, though not at the right time
with the heat already down and dead.
i saw the movie without much expectation (i went to the movie only coz I had nothing else to do and it was a gang-visit) because in the promos, munna tells
’’yaen? kadhallayum jeichi vazhkailayum jeikka mudiyaathaa???’’. and I was assured tht this movie is another one which is gonna praise and glorify pure love and
all-tht-kinda-stuff.
but the movie was worse than just tht.
only +ve pt tht appears in my mind is
the hypocrisy of the current crop of youth (esp by tht bobgaly char) is portrayed well.
as for the negative reactions, it has come for the wrong reasons.....
if the movie is crass, reality is ’’crasser’’....
i ve seen many people more extreme than this .....
(but I cant think of anyone whom I know, of the stupidity of the protagonists’ deeds, I mean only intentions)
ditto for the language .... the lingo of youth is farther than what is depicted.
but WHY TAKE A MOVIE ABT A BUNCH OF SUCH WEAKLINGS is a BIG QUESTION.
and if one does tht it should be intended at showing the REAL END possible to such phases of one’s life.
but the movie can boast of it’s realistic depiction only in the protagonists’s thoughts and intentions(and tht too only to a certain extent), which are quite similar to reality. taking into acct. shankar’s beginning voice-over, it’s in fact apt.
but regarding what these people actually DO, it’s total bullshit.
examples are aplenty. in fact it’s the whole movie, consisting of stupid actions of those five brats.
- munna running naked to ’’prove’’ his love (????? my foot, agirl would rather die than marrying a guy like him) and our ’’modern’’ girl falling for his selfless deed....
(shankar must have directed this movie in a wierd dream)
they bringing home a pros. (this is very much possible, though I havent heard of one such among my friends lot. but it’s the noise which munna makes, the rocking-the-cot scenes I am talkin abt. if one wanted to ’’make it’’, why doenst he do it ? and if he’s really hesitating it’ fine. but no pros. will be such a creature tht whe wud make ’’noises’’, sit on a rocking cot for the money one gives. she is bound to get irritated.)
All of them comin out of house for no good reason... selvaraghavan must have given a solid base for the protagonist to come out of his house ... I mean something more sensitive than middle-of-the-house bashing at one of the guy’s house.
(tht scene is a whole mess... such a parents meeting where vivek comes and talks for both of them is one of the dumbest scenes shankar will ever produce)
the above mentioned scene where the parents’ actions are equally stupid.
harini enlightening her father tht he has actually ’’lost’’ his life and is crying out alone with kerchiefs, hair strands etc etc. and she has actually ’’won’’ it out by joining her ’’true love’’.
(this particular scene was applauded by many, u see.. often for sujatha’s dialogue... may be it was well-framed.. the words I mean... but it’s content is all the more stupid. sujatha will not be proud of this dialogue and I guess he wont be personally goin with the spirit of the movie at all.)
and a lot more. (the abv-mentioned are just those which I was forced to mention)
such deeds can only result in complete doom.....
but in this movie they ’’win over the world with their love in tact’’ (in those words)...
i dunno what they did to win in their life??? perhaps they composed music which they cud have done even being in their home. all the 5 come out because each fo them are in love with each one of the girls... (one-to-one mapping? is it?). but none of their love is shown to be strong. it seems as if they all had come out this munna-harini affair... friendship doesnt sink alright... but no one wud come out of his shouse jus like tht.. put urself in a juju’s posn ... well-off, if not loving parents (and what id they after all do? stoppin their son from falling into a chasm is what they are for, however harsh is the way, they go abt doin it.)...
the movie cud have been better if it had shown only the ’’happening’’ results (though it WILL be tragic or at least not fruitful) to such actions in one’s life rather than goin into eulogising love, friendship like a far-fetched-fantasy in the second half.
overall, the movie is a quarter-baked one which tries not to shun from reality, but gets itslef into far-fetched-fantasy.. in between it talks of ’’very-brief’’ hardship, their part-time jobs and jail phase... but what is not shown is thts all it’s gonna be ....
the group’s music abilites are not shown tht well in the beginning sequences and suddenly vivek comes up and tells them to start a band jus because each of them knows something like writing, singing, playing instru. etc.... the real band-forming people, (may be they start with just little music aptitute, taking into acct the current MTV trends, but play their respective guitars with passion) are far committed than these.
vivek is the sole consolation in some witty oneliners(only a very small % of the actual total of his dialogues).
sujatha is in invisble mode. so is shankar. (????)
or is it tht he is very much visible in a very dull and idiotic form, coz it’s the director who has to take the responsibilty?
his characters talk normally in his fims.... but these ones talk like big melodramatic guys (the lead ones) ... and even the others... they speak insipidly... the policeman telling (rather stating) the above-18-then-major rule, came as bullshit to my ears (as if no one knew it!!!!)..... most of the the scenes are executed with stupidity ...
(perhaps the bar scene gives us an excception)
the earth-quake and kumar’s death are purely thrusted in and has nothing consequential in the movie whatsoever.
the reasonin for the earth-quake is given as to let the lovebirds join .... is ridiculous.
shankar (for this earth-quake idea and for the rest as well) and sujatha (even only for writing tht one dialogue if he did, and for the rest as well) deserve
something-dead-oppisite-to-a-pat (i dont want to make it more offensive)
they all goto dating to some beach... heck I havent seen any such place where women (or girls) roam around in bikinis.... the dating is done as if everyone wanted to do something like tht for no good reason (may be even in reality, people go only this way.. as I dont have a
first-hand experience on it, neither do I wanna have)
it was all outright stupid... not shankar’s usual way.....
shankar takes commercial-but-intelligent movies (in most his movies certain
’’totally unreal’’ thing lingers around.... but the way they are executed is quite believable and they talk like real people.
he continues with his alternate-hard-hitting-movie trend (the political-trilogy consisting of gentleman, indian, and mudhalvan are all kinda-fairy-tales but hard-hitting) by again giving a movie like boys following kadhalan and jeans (the first two of this trilogy is not as worse as boys with jeans containing virtually nothing to talk abt... I mean those two are also not-worth-movies but not as insipid as boys.
arr has NOT given a good album for us.. this is very mediocre stuff by him... all MTV-ish beat-it kinda songs... forgettable... BGM... let’s not talk abt it... I dint notice.
1 STAR coz the music too was not tht impressive