Bad karma! That is possibly the only logical reason why I watched this movie with Raghu and Madhu on Friday evening.
Due to the long weekend that I mentioned in my previous post, I wanted to watch as many movies as possible in these 4 days. On Thursday, the 3 of us went to Inox and found that only 4 movies were being screened and tickets were available only for the night shows.
So we were hell bent on watching something anywhere on Friday. The website of Satyam Cinemas was quite slow (probably due to the Under Sea Internet Cable being cut) and online booking was ruled out. Inox’s website has never worked for me, so we decided to just head out to Mayajal and hope for the best.
Unfortunately, certain people delayed their arrival for some vague reason and so by the time we reached there, tickets for Ghajini were available only in the 2nd row from the screen. Most of you familiar with Mayajal would have experienced the physical strain of watching a movie even while seated in the 5th row from the back and so watching a movie in the 2nd row from the screen would be nearly suicidal. And we had almost 2.5 hours to the next screening of that movie and so we decided to call it quits.
We just snacked up at the restaurant outside Mayajal and then started heading home. En route, we had this urge to visit the Prarthana Drive-In theatre and see how the place was. When we dropped in, we found that the movie that was being aired (pun unintended) was Abhiyum Naanum. The reviews of this movie clearly pointed out the fact that it belonged to the genre of “Sentiment”. We generally abhor this genre, but as fate would have it, the lure or rather the desperation to watch a movie made us take this drastic step of buying the tickets!
After we parked the car at a ramp, the movie started almost immediately. It was clear that watching the movie from the backseat would be an impossible ask and so all of us got down. Raghu was kind enough to spread his car cover on the ramp and we settled down.
The movie is basically a first person narration of the experiences of a man who showers extreme affection on his only girl child and is unable to come to terms with the fact that when she grows up, she can make her own decisions ranging from wanting to bring home a beggar to bringing home his son-in-law.
According to some of the Tamizh magazines, amongst the various flavors of "sentiments"that have been showcased on screen, the father-daughter one has not been catered before. If this is indeed the case, then the movie makers have hit the jackpot.
I don’t know about you, but I find it completely weird and borderline insane, that someone would narrate his entire life history to a complete stranger in a park, simply because that stranger also happens to have a kid daughter!
The film is riddled with clichés from the start to the end. A perfect family with perfect neighbors; a character who just appears every other screen only to make a one-line question which evokes a "witty"response; oodles of sentimental dialogues; Sardarjis who can only dance and shout and be generally obnoxious; the son-in-law who is the epitome of a good Samaritan who has gone around the country looking for people affected by the various sad incidents that have separated the average man from his/her family; the same son-in-law who is so well qualified that he appears on TV and also gets a call directly from the Prime Minister; and he is also very adept of repairing automobiles and driving like a maniac; the man-servant on the bride's side and the woman-servant of the groom's side falling in love; and so on and so forth.
There were some 4 or 5 times when I did chuckle at some of the jokes, but even these were really not that up to the mark and were evident insertions to lighten the heavy mood of a particular scene. The only place where I thought some interesting exchanges would happen was when Trisha confronts her father Prakash Raj to find out why he was acting so aloof once the wedding plans were announced. But unfortunately, the lass is not used to the concept of acting and so the scene fails to evoke any kind of emotion. This is the first time in her career when she has had a chance to act and she has definitely let it go big time. And the acting of Prakash Raj leaves a lot to be desired. The good thing was that he has underplayed the role and so thankfully there was no hamming.
The only positives in the movie were the absence of kuthu paattu, double meaning dialogues, beautifully choreographed fight scenes and punch dialogues. Otherwise this is as bad as any tear-jerker that we have seen over the years.
Cutting back to real life, we were watching this movie in the open air Drive-In theatre right? Considering this is the month of Maargazhi there was quite a bit evening dew or பனி in local parlance. Since the theatre is also near the sea shore, there was quite a bit of cold sea breeze as well. I was already heading towards a cold-cough ritual and this was clearly adding up to the trouble. The net result is that I woke up this morning with a very nasty cold and a mild cough!
All in all, my astrological equation vis-à-vis சனியும் நானும் made me watch அபியும் நானும் and has left me in a state of சளியும் நானும் !!!
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