| VENKAT
PRABHU GAME OR GIMMICK |
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| By
Meera Ramanathan |
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| To
begin with let me confess unabashedly
that I’m a fan. An ardent one. I
watched Chennai 28 numerous times and
quote the dialogues in real life to annoy
family and friends. I cheered for Saroja
even when most of the scenes were shot
in poor light; these were everyday heroes,
not the super heroes whom we normally
see in Tamil Cinema. The Goa towel scene
earned a special mention in the humor
honor roll. Now that I’ve clearly
stated that I’m part of the cult
- Venkat Prabhu boys-only movies, even
by my standards, Mankatha was a let down.
Yes, I get it, Ajith played a baddie;
but not to the standards of Heath Ledger
in The Dark Knight. So
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let’s stop lavishing the praises and appreciation.
He played a negative hero with a cunning mind and
employed vicious tactics to con people. For that I
will tip my hat in his direction. Now if Ajith’s
character was in par with Kamal in Sigappu Rojakkal,
I would give him credit for choosing to play a negative
role. But Vinayak Mahadev is suspiciously close to
Daniel Ocean (George Clooney) complete with the salt
and pepper hair style. It seems that Venkat Prabhu
thought of crafting Daniel Ocean and as an afterthought
or on insistence ended up with Vinayak Mahadev. So
let’s hold the applause.
We never watch Venkat Prabhu movies expecting picture
perfect shots like Mani Ratnam, million dollar sets
like Shankar, brilliant characterization like Vettrimaran
or comedy like Singeetham Sreenivasa Rao. Our expectations
reign at the right level, we get in fully expecting
to see a Venkat Prabhu movie. Premji will make us
laugh, Vaibhav will be the innocent extra and Jai/Shiva
will be the blink and you will miss hero. Logic will
take a back seat and there will be no super hero stunts.
The female leads will be for namesake. The story will
be close to real life with more than one ‘othavakarai’
boys. There will be no edge of the seat climax sequences
or heartwarming romances. The movie will be ordinary
like our own lackluster lives. We would laugh, clap
and when we head out, we would have had the satisfaction
of having watched an entertainer. Period.
So when Venkat Prabhu defied the rules of his genre
and went about casting a real hero like Ajith, our
interests were piqued. The movie was about betting
and we thought he would handle it well. Betting was
still a boys-only game. He was well within his boundaries,
so Ajith would just add to the brand value. What went
wrong? Was it the onus of directing a biggie like
Ajith and the fact that it was his 50th?
Venkat Prabhu is a director who does not make tall
claims of brilliance. Yet, Rajni and Kamal together
graced the Chennai 28 100 days function and congratulated
the team for bringing out the nuances of friendship
with wit and humor. When the entire team of Saroja
graced the sets of Coffee with Anu, questions were
forgotten and we were reeling with laughter. Goa tackled
homosexuality, still a very taboo and hushed topic,
with enough sincerity akin to world peace. These were
the boys who made us laugh, their stories were from
our backyards. They were not clean shaven and chiseled
sporting six packs. Premji’s costume for the
most part of Chennai 600028 was a lungi. We could
have ruled Venkat Prabhu as first time lucky but he
was consistent through Saroja and Goa. The humor was
prominent, the storyline wavering and the plot unfolds
as an afterthought. We still loved them.
But Mankatha was different. It had an overload of
guns and it looked like Arjun was rounding off the
bookies. Premji’s computer gimmicks which were
shamelessly “inspired” from The Italian
Job let our jaws hanging out on new levels of low.
Apparently the only rules that Venkat Prabhu stuck
to was the number of boys. So we had Mahat, Vaibhav
and Ashwin. We are not going to complain about the
female actors. It is a Venkat Prabhu movie, so even
if it did not have any female leads we would not have
complained. We just wanted the humor, the sparks from
Premji and the boys to click together. It’s
not that we mind that the movie was about IPL betting
and that it is illegal but we don’t expect serious
thrillers from Venkat Prabhu. We do have Gautham Menon
to dish out psych thrillers. The best part of Mankatha
seems to be the Thala Briyani which we never got to
taste. So yes, we feel let down. We want ordinary
stories with extraordinary comedy. We want boys picked
from the streets of Chennai who can make us laugh,
cry and leap with joy. We don’t care for logic
but we want an entertainer. In fact, we just want
another Saroja Saman Nikhalo. |
