Hopefully you missed it... Review on Theeratha Vilayattu Pillai

I usually don’t watch commercial tamil movies but I watched the movie Theeratha Vilayattu pillai as a favor to a friend who wanted my thoughts on it. This is not so much a review as a lament for actually having watched it.

The Good:

The performance by the movie’s supporting cast which includes Mauli, prakashraj and Santhanam is commendable, although mouli and prakash raj are reduced to small and predictable roles. Santhanam on the other hand has got the lion share of the pie when it comes to the comedy element in the movie and seems to have really come of age as a comedian; his one-liners are delivered crisply and are genuinely funny. Unfortunately these are the only redeeming features of this movie.

The Bad:

The movie begins with an unbearably long sequence of vishal looking all beat-up and drenched in the rain, these shots are shown alternatively between opening titles and after an eternity of close-up shots of vishal and his terribly messed up hair, we see that he goes headlong into a one-way road like he’s running out of time to save the world and promptly hits an oncoming vehicle and does what I can call an air swimming routine before he crashes on to the ground and blacks out. Why he pulls such a crazy stunt is something that defies all logic especially since there is no real explanation for it except that it somehow ties into a cheesy climax that the script writer had already planned on ending the movie with.

The three heroines are completely at sea with the Tamil language and this is plainly and sometimes painfully visible. Why they would get someone like Tanushree dutta to play a local tamil girl is something I can never really understand. Neetu Chandra on the other had has a few good moments on screen but these are spoilt by clichéd run of the mill scenes, not to mention the voice which seems way too stiff to be hers and feels downright absurd at times.

The wedding scene in which sarah jane dias is introduced is something extraordinary, not because of her beauty or poise or screen presence but by the absolute shocker of expressions from vishal which makes you think he was trying to emulate Dustin Hoffman's role in the movie Rain man. Vishal’s antics on screen seem apt for a very gay and mentally retarded person. Sarah jane’s performance on the other hand is pretty good if you can get past her bad lip sync and uncomfortably executed dance moves.

The ugly:

Vishal’s character displays plenty of male chauvinism sometimes to uncomfortable levels, take the police human bomb scene, in which Sarah jane is left very traumatized by the sudden arrival of a plethora of policemen takes a fantastically absurd turn wherein vishal comes in like a protector only to get close and use her vulnerable state to feel up different parts of her body. Damn now why didn’t I think of this wonderful routine? Well for one thing it’s such a sleaze ball move and any girl who’s got enough brains to figure out how to open a tin can would realise what just happened.

Now the director decides that he hasn’t had nearly enough fun till now having beaten the audience black and blue with cheesy scenes so he decides to dress up neetu Chandra in a bikini and have her walk out all wet from a swimming pool. The result of this is a brilliant one liner which goes somewhat like “Evlo irunthalum ne pombala, Onnume illenalum nan ambla” and also the seemingly crowd favorite “Pombalaya Lakshanama Selayakattiko”; this to a girl that just walked out of a swimming pool.

Well to round it up this movie is a complete waste of time and the resources that went into making it; the only thing worth watching in it is santhanam’s comedy which seems to be improving with every movie of his.