Saturday, April 30, 2011

Vaanam - the review (sort of)


Before you start judging me for watching Chimbu movies in the theatre, this is what happened:

S had wanted to watch the Tamil movie Ko. Last night, he said he had booked tickets for the movie. Late this morning, we went to the theatre. We were well in time for the pre-movie trailers. A couple of movie trailers later, the trailer for the Tamil movie Vaanam popped up. The theatre was filled with ear-piercing shrieks and whistles. Wow! I turned to S and whispered wonderingly, "I can't believe a Chimbu movie is getting so many whistles for the trailer itself!"

Which was when S turned to me and grinned broadly, "This is not the trailer, this is the movie. We are watching Vaanam. I booked tickets for Vaanam, not Ko."

I think my face became smaller by 3 sizes. For, a) I hate the gimmicky lyrics and consequently the song "Evandi unnai petthan" in Vaanam and had mentally made a note to never watch the movie even if it was featuring anyone other than b) Chimbu, whose movies I think are usually cheap (VTV being the exception). Furthermore, the movie featured c) Anushka, whom I fondly call Anushka maami coz I think she looks like a maami with those big-round kohled eyes.

And now, S had successfully managed to make me sit in the theatre to watch a movie featuring all of the above. Aaaaargh! S, how could you!!

Anyhoo, after some 10 minutes of bristling (and thus happily not paying much  attention to the totally gratuitous opening song and subsequent fight sequence), I decided that I might as well make the best of a bad thing and settled down to watch.

And wound up being pleasantly surprised. The movie has five parallel tracks and of course, one knew that all the twines would eventually meet but it was quite interesting to watch how events would unfold to make that happen.

The stories are multiplexed with one another and hence, before you get too bored with one track, the next track is on. There are some funny one-liners in between to keep you laughing when things become too serious.

But the thing which I found was a very refreshing change from typical Indian movies was that Anushka (one of the more popular heroines in Tamil cinema now) was cast as a prostitute. That was not the big deal. The big deal was that she was unapologetically cast as one.

Otherwise, all Indian movies I have seen, which dare to feature currently popular heroines as prostitutes invariably have a long flashback about how a dead/alcoholic father, a mother racking with whooping cough, a crippled brother, an unmarried sister and numerous other pathos-ridden family members were the reason why the virtuous heroine took it upon herself to become a prostitute. No such stories for Anushka. She just says "I have no education and I took this up as a profession." and that's all there is to it.


Finally, even commercial Indian cinema seems to be growing up! Actors (especially female ones) need not always have to maintain their "good" image - they are acting in a movie and what role they play in a movie has no reflection on their real life!

On the whole, the movie was fast-paced and decent entertainment. While I wouldn't urge you to run out and watch the movie ASAP, it is definitely not something to be avoided either. If you voluntarily go or if you are caught in the theatre like I was, be happy and enjoy the ride!

p.s. In case you are wondering, both Chimbu and Anushka acted fine and I was not irritated by either :-).

7 comments:

Anita said...

Not bad. Atleast you survived to tell the tale (or maybe it was S who survived).

kutti said...

Is S a closet simbu fan? :D LOL !

Subbu said...

It is not Chimbu flick, actually the movie is a remake of telugu movie Vedam-a super duper hit.That movie never had that cheap song like" evandi unna pethan". But our great chimbu can still bring some cheapness to a good movie by including that song which he had sung so badly. By the way, I heard Ko was a much better movie & they are going to remake the movie in Hindi too...Since Vanan was a rip off of a good movie, so it was bearable or else never venture into a chimbu movie, you will have total mental destruction for sure...

Sahu said...

nice one but you are saying that song is very ........
you don't forgot only we are watching the film entire chimbu fans want it.
finally its not a good thought from Krrish whose direct the movie.
see it in telugu Vedam nice n fairly outputted.

Archana said...

Sindu - LOL - that is actuallly true!

Kutti - S actually told me quite seriously "But you liked VTV. It thought you don't mind Chimbu". Bah!

Subbu - I can see I am meeting another Chimbu-hater in you :-D. I read only later that this movie is a remake. True, had this been an out and out Chimbu movie, I think we would have walked out long before the movie ended!

Sahu - I know! Seriously, that song had no place whatsoever in the movie!

SK said...

Oh i thought I left a comment.
But Hahahhahahah! S knows how to get you to do things ! :--D
Kudos to you for watching Simbu in big screen, he spoilt Vinnaithaandi Varuvaaya for me.

Archana said...

SK - tell me about it! I thought Chimbu was tolerable in VTV - I think Gautam Menon had a wooden ruler and rapped Chimbu on the knuckles every time he started acting crass!!