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BY FLICKS: UNITED IN ATTITUDE! |
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They first came together in 2007 with
Chennai 28. Now, you don’t need
to be told about Chennai 28 and what it
did to Tamil cinema. It was a fresh perspective
from a team that didn’t take itself
too seriously. It was that lighter and
casual feel that translated into enjoyable
viewing on screen. The team was full of
youngsters, newcomers brimming with enthusiasm
and mischief, raring to create a space
(a unique space for themselves) in Tamil
cinema. Captained by Venkat Prabhu, this
team rose to huge popularity in 2008 with
Saroja. Their rise was almost as meteoric
as the Sri Lankan cricket team’s
upsurge in the mid 90s which culminated
with their world cup win in 96. Venkat
Prabhu’s team might not have won
a world cup, but they did win a lot of
hearts. Perhaps it would not be wrong
to call this team as Venkat Prabhu and
his band of merry men; because, to them
the most essential element in cinema appears
to fun, both for themselves and the audiences.
The core of the team consisted of the
loud mouthed Premji and the naturally
sarcastic Shiva (you could call them the
opening pair of the team – just
like Sachin and Sehwag for the Indian
team in ODIs). The middle order too consisted
of some fun loving performers like Jai
and Vaibhav who kept lending strength
to the team. While the intensity, fury
and power were provided lower down the
order by Sampath (who is sometimes |
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forgotten to be mentioned as a constant in the Venkat
Prabhu team). It is also essential to note the contributions
of the support staff here, headed by Yuvan.
The team worked beautifully in its first two outings,
Chennai 28 and Saroja. The emphasis on fun was never
lost, even in the darkest of moments (literally, in
Saroja). That is why we loved them. But, hits make
stars out of actors, give call sheet issues and ultimately
result in an under-strength team being forced to cope,
just like the Indian test team looked lost in Kanpur
without Rahul Dravid’s assured presence in the
middle order.
So came Goa. This time, the team lacked Shiva (as
mentioned above), one of their openers. Naturally,
one would have expected the team to feel the pinch
of his absence because fun cannot be spontaneously
created without the person with whom you are used
to having fun with. But, that was not the case. In
fact, the team did not betray any such deficiency
in its ranks. Agreed, Goa is being widely speculated
as the least impressive of the three Venkat Prabhu
films to date, but is has definitely not lost out
on the fun quotient at all which tells us that the
core of the team is indeed in tact.
But, this is not only about Goa, this is also about
what Shiva has been up to away from his comfort zone,
his home turf. Shiva delivered his wittiest performance
to date through Thamizh Padam. It was as if being
separated from his fellow wit specialists in Goa did
not affect him even in the slightest way. It is also
hard not to notice that both Thamizh Padam and Goa
are similar films on a few counts – they have
been made for fun viewing rather than any kind of
serious introspection. And, it is perhaps both ironical
and poetic that Goa and Thamizh Padam released on
the same day opposite each other. But, perhaps it
is more appropriate to say that Goa and Thamizh Padam
released along side each other. That is because they
were made with the same intentions, by teams which
valued fun more than anything else, by people who
did not take themselves too seriously, for those who
did not mind a bit of self-deprecation if it came
with a lot of deprecation aimed randomly at others,
even if they were time honored traditions of Tamil
cinema.
The Venkat Prabhu band of merry men may have been
forced by circumstances to do two separate films.
But, they have remained a team in principle, delivering
content that is funny, irreverent and cheeky. Hoping
to see more such merry acts from the band of merry
men and also hoping for the day when clichés
in Tamil cinema will be exclusive comic material than
story telling instruments.
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