SABHAAPATHY MOVIE REVIEW CLICK TO RATE THE MOVIE

Sabhaapathy is a film written and directed by Srinivasa Rao and produced by Ramesh Kumar under the banner RK Entertainment. It has Santhanam and Preeti Varma in the lead roles while MS Bhaskar, Sayaji Shinde, Pugazh and others play crucial supporting roles. It has music by Sam CS and cinematography by Baskar Arumugam. 

Sabhaapathy (Santhanam) is an innocent man who stammers a lot. He has deep romantic feelings for Savi (Preeti), his neighbour. Circumstances get him into a serious issue involving crores of rupees and his life turns upside down. How he manages to overcome them and confess his love to Savi forms the plot. 

Sabhaapathy is the kind of film that one would say, has a wicked sense of humor. It tosses aside subjective elements like morality and political correctness and wants to be outrageously funny. And when it tries that, it's successful for most parts. Especially the sequence that starts with a drunk Santhanam tearing his father MS Bhaskar's baniyan, and ending with him vomiting on MS Bhaskar's head, is one of the funniest, innovative parts of the film. 

Then there are some middling portions which has the same 'wicked' comedy, but they don't work because the line for humour seems to be erased and the jokes cross the line. A good example of such a sequence is Sabhaapathy flashing his private parts to his father while a female teacher looks on. Such jokes weren't in good taste. On the other hand, there are some emotional scenes as well that miss a beat and doesn't make us empathize with Santhanam. 

Finally, the scenes that set up the romance between Santhanam and Preeti seem disconnected with the audience, and this affects the engagement as well. The three types of scenes mentioned above keep coming one after another in no particular order and that is the major issue with Sabhaapathy. The film is not consistent till the end. 

Among the performances, Santhanam is in top form and so is Pugazh. The other actors tried their best in the limited space they have. The writing by Srinivasa Rao is neat. Usually we see father characters be angry on screen for no reason. But here, MS Bhaskar's character has a convincing back story, and that goes along with the theme of inferiority complex that the film talks about. 

Sam CS' music offers solid support to the film with the background score deserving special appreciation. The cinematography and editing gets the basics right, it gives the film what it needs.

Overall, Sabhaapathy ends up as one of Santhanam's better films as a lead. There's a small tribute to the 1941 Tamil film with the same name and it was enjoyable. Though not as funny as the 1941 Sabapathy, this one aspires to be one, and the effort is clearly visible.