The Tamizh movie Mozhi has been receiving rave reviews from all quarters. All magazines have hailed it and many of my friends at work have also endorsed it. The endorsement is in fact at such levels that my car pool friends bring up the movie and its dialogues every day during my voyage to work.
And when the topic is brought up, I have nothing to contribute to the discussion and would naturally feel left out. But then the kind of joy it brought up to my 3 friends made me wonder what was so darn special in that movie.
Like I mentioned, the reviews in magazines have been great. So my folk wanted to see the movie. I tried booking tickets for the past 4-5 weekends and invariably something or the other cropped up at the nth minute and we never went to the movie.
Finally, I booked tickets for the evening show on June 3rd. It was at Satyam complex and I selected good seats and also ordered the snacks online. The pop corn was served hot, along with the cool drinks that were cold, just before the interval. So my folks were slightly thrilled on that aspect as well.
Anyways, the movie.
The first half was simply superb. It probably had one of the best comedy sequences I've seen in recent times. In spite of the puppy shame sequence, there was nothing vulgar in any of the jokes. Though I'd heard most of the jokes in the car (thanks to my over zealous friends), I laughed a lot while watching it on screen.
There were minor strokes of emotions thrown in between, but the intensity and frequency of these were definitely at an acceptable level. The acting of Prakash Raj and also that of Prithviraj was brilliant. The former was especially rocking.
Anyways, the happiness bubble didnt last very long. Luckily it wasnt a case a baloon bursting, but more of a gradual leakage of water from a broken valve in a flush tank. The second half was evidently much slower than the first. And the ratio of comedy and emotion between the two halves were directly in indirect proportions, if you know what I mean.
I think that the director started feeling the need to wind up the movie and started thrusting some situations. In fact these scenes have a bearing in the way Jyothika changes her fundamental beliefs. But I didn't find the reasons presented in those situations, that compelling.
However, all things said and done, I did like the movie, the cinematic insertions notwithstanding. After analysing a bit deeper on what endeared the movie to me, I came up with the following reasons:
1. Awesome comedy, especially the first half by itself.
2. At a high level, its probably a simple love story - but it had very different but normal characters.
3. No kuthu paatu
4. No weird villain with weirder habits
5. Melodrama quite under control
6. No overacting by anyone
Jo's acting was actually praised by everyone too. But I am somehow not very impressed. In certain scenes her facial expression was quite uni-dimensional and she came across as more of a mentally retarded (sorry for not using the politically correct term) person than a deaf and mute. I haven't seen that Hindi movie featuring Salman K, Manisha K, Nana P and Seema B, where the last 2 are also deaf and mute. Should see the performance of those real actors before thinking what our dear Jo has accomplished.
Some things I didn't like (not just the movie, the surrounding aspects too):
1. The songs were seriously a pain. No fast beats. All melodies. But I think the theatre people were trying to get the audience to empathize with Jo's character. I definitely started feeling that if I had a problem with my ear, I wouldn't have to endure the songs that were played at such a loud volume.
Every time a song came up, my hands automatically went into the position of holding a remote to reduce the volume.
2. And outside of the type of song and the volume it was given to the audience, my opinion that songs are a distraction in a movie was not changed. I felt that almost all the songs were kind of pushed into the sequence.
3. As usual, there were annoying people sitting behind me. There was one group to my right who had seen the movie already or probably, they were the people who scripted the movie. Coz they were like reciting the dialogues (lyrics too) even before they were coming from the speakers. Then there were 2 guys on my left side who were like constantly yapping away crap. More than their chatting, what was causing me grief was the fact the guy sitting directly behind me, had a bad need for itch guard. There can be no other possible reason why he had to stretch himself so regularly and thereby keep pushing my seat.
4. When the trailer of Sivaji was shown, there were whistles. But it wasn't very heavy or at least not at the levels I expected them to be. Only while we were leaving the hall did I notice the crowd and realised that expecting a crowd with an average age of 56, to blow whistles for thalaivar's movies was too much.
5. And yes, the second half sagged quite a bit and the director should not have let that happen.
But like I said before, I did like the movie. And if at all you want my recommendation about watching it, all I can say is that you should.
Not "you must" but "you should".
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