Ayyo!naar

Tamizh cinema has come a long way from those days when loser-stalker love stories where successfully doing their rounds successfully in tinsel town.  Sethu came as a shot in the arm for Kollywood film makers who loved to make out-of-the-box movies but were unable to do so for fear of rejection. If not for Sethu, I am sure we would have never had a Subramanyapuram or a Myna. I am digressing.  

Enna Koduma Saravanan Ithu?

 Meet Raja ‘Myth’ran (note name carefully fellows), a man who weaves a Cameron-meets-Dharani-meets-Spielberg-meets-Vasanthabalan world in his neo noire (whatever that means) , superhero, action cum thriller cum comedy flick – A.Y.A.N.A.A.R ( imagine animation with fonts whizzing past the screen amidst inspirational BGM). The movie is so good that it is set to make history as the first Indian movie to be remade in Hollywood. Wait - that’s  unnecessary. Just dubbing this movie into English and unleashing the monstrosity, raw and wild, on unwitting westerners should suffice. 

Now you get the drift. The movie is total bulls***. Even if they had employed some moolai  instead of some moolah, this movie would have been watchable at best ; unluckily not to be the case. It’s so bizarre that it does not fit into any particular genre. Rumor has it that a new genre,  crapo noire,  has been proposed by IMDB to classify this movie. If a movie beats to pulp Satyam and Kandasamy in crappiness and lack of logic, at least then it deserves this honor, right?  This is the first movie I seriously contemplated walking out at half time and I’m still wondering  why I dint do that in the first place.

 More appalling than the mokka screenplay, kevalamaana casting and saniyan-puticha camera work is the conspicuous lack of any bit of common sense in the film . Twenty minutes in to the movie there is a flashback sequence which begins with a title card ‘2 years ago, Kumbakonam’ and then after some time the movie quietly slips back to the present  day  Chennai, only that the audience are completely unaware of it. The movie darts back and forth between the present and past like a shaky palaya ambassador car and all that the viewers are left with is a rotten kutanchoru. Yow director! At least you could have used a differentiating aspect - like a contrasting saturation. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind employed Kate Winslet’s blue hair streaks to make that distinction.

In what world does the police investigating a murder case come across the prime suspect on the run and not arrest him? To be honest even toward the end of the movie one is not able to make out who’s who in the protagonist’s family. Considering that the entire movie revolves around this family, it’s a big Vekakedu.

 And my god what were they thinking when they cast the heroine!  And where did she go half way through the movie?  One may think of Aadhi (of Eeram) to be an ideal fit but of what use was Vikram in Kandasamy? 

And Aadhi’s dance moves – Yew, Enna koduma Saravanan Ithu!  Santhanam appears here and there  in the first half hour or so and suddenly absconds. He must have seen no good in contributing to such a bad movie any further.

Almost all the dialogues are clichéd, mushy and suttufied  from other B-grade movies.  For no one reason at all, in the last half an hour everyone starts calling the hero Ayanaar  just so that the movie’s name makes sense.  Still there are many, many huge logic-hole (not pronounced logical) moments in the movie and I am just barely scratching the surface.  One can comfortably wager that the director dint even spend that much time working on the screenplay as I did writing this review.

It ghastly reminds us of those dark days of Tamizh cinema when Abbas and Vineeth were considered the next superstars and when Bala was still an assistant to Balu Mahendra. To cut a long story short and to save you some bucks, AYANAAR is a disaster; something which happens when a completely clueless, aspiring filmmaker meets a desperate producer (in this case Thenappan).

Damn you friends who outvoted me!  We could have instead gone to Virudhagiri (which I hear is completely taken from Taken ) and had a hell of a time L We expected a good Aadhi movie but all that we got was a K___dhi movie ( No, not Karunanidhi and I am not that much of a cusser )

To be avoided at all costs.