Cast:

Gist: Ajith plays the provident father and the prodigal son. Son is about to get married with the father’s blessings, things are fine, every one is happy. All of a sudden there are issues. The son behaves badly in front of the bride’s family, is caught red handed making a pass at the bride’s cousin, being suspected of embezzling the father’s money and tries killing the father. Every one thinks that it is a simple case of MPD. At this stage enters the third Ajith. How Ajith and his mother Kanika fit in to the family, why is he so intent on making his father (Ajith) suffer in every possible way and why is he plotting to kill his own father is the small, very small knot of suspense.

My 2 cents: This movie is supposed to be a box office hit in India. Iam still wondering why? K.S.Ravikumar is my all time favorite masala director, but got to warn you this is one of those movies he must have directed when he was sleeping or something. Ajith always has a streak of bad luck, either he ends up with half baked stories by debut directors ( remember Citizen…whew, what was Ajith thinking??!! ) or he ends up with half baked story by successful commercial directors(Thirupathi, Varalaru…Ajith are you still in the same mode?? Why?!). Either way his movies are not that great. He does put in lots of effort, in this movie he has made a sincere attempt to play the role of a dancer, but to me…. he always seems to get a raw deal.

Kanika is Ramya Krishnan’s successor in Thanga Vettai. So I was imagining that she will play a powerful Padayappa-Neelambari type role. Instead she is a doe eyed amnesia patient. What a waste? Each parent bringing up one of the twins, the parents competing through the children, playing a huge ego battle….that, that is what I expected to see.

Instead this is just one woman getting raped, ( The woman is mean, arrogant, what more reason does the hero need to rape her? He has no choice doesn’t he? ) people force her to reconcile with the rapist, ( Especially if she is carrying the rapist’s baby, there are no second thoughts about the living arrangements, she HAS to live the rest of her life with the rapist, its that simple!), the woman running away with one baby (Well… she is under the impression that she only had one kid, because the woman’s mother plays mother and gives away her other baby and never tells her about it. How dumb?) away and ending up an amnesia patient. Me no like all this nonsense.

Aasin might want to erase this movie from her flimography. She acts as a prostitute to play with the hero’s emotions, how much more can a person degrade herself?? Even Pandu, the guy who plays Ajith’s side kic has more screen time and has much better scope for acting.

The screen play and editing were so disjointed that I didn’t even catch the villain Ajith’s name, or may be they never mentioned a name. For some reason I am in a phase where I HAVE to know the names of the characters, even if it is through old fashion dialogues like, “Chandru enge? Adho Chadhru varan. Vaa-pa Chandru. Nalla yirukiya Chandru?”, then I feel like I know Chandhru.

The villain Ajith walks in and out of the house as if there is a secret passage the rest of the world does not know about. Well, there is so much logic loop holes, whats the big deal about how Ajith enters the house?

Other: To hear songs from this tamil movie click here.
For movie trailers click here.
For picture gallery click here.

Verdict: Much better than Paramasivan, Thirupathy…etc but lacks Villain punch.

Cast: Vijaykanth, Laila

Review: I understand that, unlike me, most of you are actually busy, with “real” work on your hands. But still I got to share this with all of you. Yesterday I watched Kallazhagar starring Vijaykanth and Laila. What is the excuse?…..well it was free and we humans as a race, have a huge weekness for freebies!

The director makes Laila wear a inskirt, dips her in cold water and makes her run for about a mile and covers it in slow motion. Yes you all guessed it right, it is Laila’s debut!

The story goes like this, Laila is a orphan who is cared for by some old woman, who tells her folklore of Kallazhagar while feeding the brat. But she turns to grow up in to a total nutjob, who believes that Kallazhagar will come and marry her just like Kannan married Andaal. One fine day she sees Vijaykanth and thinks that he is Kallazhagar. Can’t blame her, because Vijaykanth is the spitting image of the Kallazhagar statue in the temple. So she goes around bugging the hell out of Vijaykanth. Our man wants nothing to with the whack-job and tells her his story hoping to get rid of her.

Actually Vijaykanth is a muslim guy(Kamaal) who happens to find out that there is a huge plot going on to kill Hindu pilgrims during the Kallazhagar festival. He knows that there will be bombs, but doesn’t know the trivial details like how many bombs, where, who will be planting them…etc. So he comes to the festival disguised as a Hindu guy(KamalaKannan) and gets very pal-y with the village people, teaches vedham and sastram to the Iyengar priests in the village and impresses the hell out of the chief “bhattar”. After a lots of sentimental and patriotic scenes/dialogues he finds out that the “chinna bhattar” is actually a spy from Pakistan and is orchestrating the bomb attack. Kamaal saves the world!

Gist: Same beaten down old love story from the times of Alaigal Oiyvadhillai. The backdrop for the movie is Madurai. Sandhya is the daughter of a wealthy businessman. She is a school girl in her 9th standard and falls in love with Barath. What is so special about Barath that Sandhya picks him to spend the rest of her life with? Is he wealthy? Nope. Is he educated? Nope. Do they share the same interests? Nope. He is the first guy to give Sandhya a piece of his mind, that’s what attracts her to him. They decide to elope for Madras and struggle to start a life. Meanwhile Sandhya’s folks are frantic. They find out through Sandhya’s schoolmate that they are in Madras and come to Madras to get her. They promise Barath and Sandhya that they will not harm them, lure them back to Madurai, beat Barath black and blue and force Sandhya to marry someone else. Few years later Sandhya finds out that Barath has lost his mind after Sandhya left him. Sandhya’s understanding husband learns about all this and takes care of Barath.

My 2 cents: The positive point of this movie is that most of it is very realistic. In fact the director, Balaji Shakthivel claims that it is a real life story. The director has pointed out that life is not a bed of roses for young lovers who elope. Sandhya’s uncle who comes to Madras in search of her sweet talks them in to returning to Madurai. As their convoy reaches Madurai, he slowly shows his true colors. These are some scenes that closely resemble real life. On the flip side, Sandhya and Barath seem to have fallen in love for no strong reason. So when they struggle to begin a life, it fails to get my sympathy. I felt like shouting, ‘serves you two right’ at the top of my voice. The climax where Sandhya’s husband learns about the truth and assumes responsibility for Barath is very dramatic. Both Barath and Sandhya have proved that they can act well. The little boy who acts as Barath’s assistant is abolutely irritating. I just can’t stand little kids who act all grown up. Joushua Sridhar’s music is pleasing.

Others:To hears songs from this tamil movie click here.
For movie gallery click here.
For movie trailer click here

Verdict: Kadhal is highly overrated.

Cast

Gist: Charan has dealt with the same old love story which has been beaten to death since the dawn of Tamil cinema. Jayam Ravi who is a catering college student is in love with Kamna and it is love at first sight for him. But Kamna rejects him, for no apparent reason. Slowly Kamna realizes that she is in love with Ravi but her ego gets the better of her. She proceeds to flirt with Prakash Raj, leads him on to a wedding in a registrar office. Finally who ends up with who is not something hard or difficult to guess.

My 2 cents: If you don’t ask logical questions, or for that matter any questions at all, it is a semi-decent masala. Villains are thrown all over the movie just to provide so called interesting turns. Ravi is quite good looking and is a good dancer. Kamna gets a pass mark in her debut performance. In the looks department, she is neither here nor there.

There is no explanation why Kamna hates her mother (Vani Vishwanath) so much. Also she flirts with any one and every one, it kind of gets on one’s nerves after sometime. All of a sudden Nasser metamorphoses in to a good guy. Songs are barely okay. Charan seems to rely soley on Kamna’s skimpy clothes to promote the movie.

Others: To hear songs from this tamil movie click here.
For movie gallery click here.
For movie trailer click here.

Verdict: In a nut shell, Idhayathirudan lacks the ability to steal the viewer’s heart.

Cast

Gist: Shyam, Laila, Aarya, Pooja and Aasin are collegemates. After they leave college they meet each other for Aarya’s wedding. In this time a lot has happened. The rest of the movie is a flashback about their college life, their friendship, broken hearts and lennnnngthy climax in which Shyam realizes that it is better to give up his one sided love and to marry the girl who loves him.

My 2 cents: This movie was first named Pepsi. After many issues the movie was finally released, but it falls quite short of expectations. Considering the fact that Laila was the only major star when the movie was made, her role receives a lot of importance. Laila is too peppy for her own good, but evokes sympathy when Shaym treats her like a pain in the wrong part of the body. I like her much better when she is calm and composed. A bubbly Laila is pretty irritating. Aarya cannot act for nuts. Let us see if his internship with Bala for ‘Naan Kadavul’ manages to mold him in to a good actor. It is Aasin’s debut. She plays a practical girl who knows what she wants in life. Shyam and Pooja manage to do their part well. Music by Harris Jeyaraj is effervescent.

Other: To hear songs from this tamil movie click here.
For movie gallery click here.
For movie trailer click here.

Verdict: Ullam Ketkume is so-so.

Gist: Don’t jump to any conclusions based on the title of the movie. The movie has nothing to do with Indians in US or identity crisis of immigrants! A is for Anand(Shyam), B is for Barathi(Nadhana), C is for Chandra(Sneha) and D is for Divya Daisy(Aparna).

The movie is about the three different women (Nadhana, Sneha, Aparna) Shyam meets in his life. All three are in love with Shyam. Shyam’s role gives an impression that he is in love with all the three of them. It is not a play boy kind of role, don’t get me wrong. Sneha is recently widowed and is quite happy about her marital status because her husband is a bad seed. Nadhana plays a middle class family girl who is the prime bread winner for her family. Aparna is an orphan. All three of them are looking for a shoulder to cry on. Shyam treats them with dignity and respect and this attracts the women. As in most of the tamil movie climaxes, the climax of ABCD is whom Shyam marries.

My 2 cents: Sneha and Nadhana’s performance are worth mentioning. Sneha has proved time and again that she is a very competent actress. Shyam and Aparna compete with one another for the worst performance award. Their dialogue delivery flat as a table top. Shyam tries to play a level headed guy who is logical and never gets over excited. But since he cannot emote, he is just standing there with absolutely no expression on his face.

The songs can be used for bio breaks!

Other: To hear songs from this movie click here.
For movie gallery click here.
For movie trailer click here.

Verdict: Director Shravana Subbaiah (the director of the movie Citizen) has tried to juggle couple of things. He attempts to tell the audience about the hardships faced by women in everyday life and also about the delicate relationship ties. He has a long way to go.