Score: One in a thousand...

It is tough to write about this movie without being sardonic. Ayirathil Oruvan lives up to its name - on a scale of 1000, it would receive a grand score of 1, and that is because of unintentional comedy.

The movie is a ridiculous waste of time and money. The gore content is terrible, so too is the Apocalypto-style costume design. No motives are provided, no explanations either. The movie simultaneously tries to pander to B/C audiences and be intelligent, alluding to legends and doing away with intelligible dialogue for a good 20 mins in the second half. It also tries to simultaneously explore and master a genre too large for either. Guilty too it is of showing a character simultaneously heroic and pusillanimous, with no shades in between. In short, the movie suffers from an identity crisis - it is neither the unformed vision of a master-director, nor the structured product of a commercial house. From a cast that boasts the wildly talented Karthi and Andrea, and the oh-so-sexy Reemma, apart from Selvaraghavan, known for his engrossing (albeit controversial) movies, the movie is not only terrible, but a mockery of their talents.

The plus points - exchanges between the lead trio are enjoyable. One feels that had the movie taken the course of a survival flick, with the trio weathering a hostile forest and a jungle tribe while fighting and understanding themselves, the end result would have been positively terrific. Reemma is admittedly gorgeous, though in my honest opinion Andrea beats her hands down without trying. For example, the part in 'En maela aasai dhaan' where she makes to remove her top was easily THE most smouldering part of the movie, including the numerous fires and concomitant killings.

The background music, though a bit loud at times, was well rendered. Re-Recording was par excellence, and the music in general was enjoyable. The pseudo-carnatic bit with the King and the Intruder was enjoyable to this untrained ear, and "En Maela" was frankly groovy. All other songs were passe, and where the hell was "Maalai Naeram"?

Acting was good through the movie, and camera work was amazing also. Graphics were a bit childish, though a laudable attempt.

AO is an example of how a film that is stretched out too long can sometimes take a direction completely opposite what a director may have intended. It is also testimony that however talented your cast and crew, the bottom line is the script - if you do not invest time in fleshing out a script for a movie of this magnitude, chaos will result. It saddens me that the first major foray by Kollywood into this genre tells you what exactly not to do.

Highlights:

1. Karthi's acting
2. Andrea's stunning (albeit completely underutilized) mix of acting and looks
3. Reemma's Tomb Raider outfit
4. BGM
5. Scale of production

You wouldn't want to miss:

1. The amazingly talented army that uses wooden shields with holes, and runs towards barbarians who specialize at melee combat.
   
2. Reemma's hilarious shoot-and-move scene with the snakes
3. Lactating blood *yuk*
4. The threesome in the cave!
5. The small bit, right at the end, that says, wait for it, "To be continued"

To be blunt: The only reason the movie was finished as it was was because there was no way to ties up all the loose ends, provide motive and historical perspective to this without spending another 25 crores, and 2 hours. The director lost the plot somewhere around the song "Un maela aasai". After that, it was all downhill. There was one complete comedy of a song, which should have been a 'music promo' for the movie. The graphics to me were under-par, but the scale of application makes this understandable. Who the hell is that archaeologist and how the hell did he get past everything?

Final word: Avoid. At all costs. Maybe if the world was ending and you wanted to badly see a Tamil movie before you died, you could watch this. Even then, I would recommend Vaettaikaaran.

In the CSE department, where the shadows lie...

It was a hot day. A hot, sunny day. A hot, sunny, sweaty day. A hot, sunny, sweaty, worthy-of-numerous-more-such-adjectives day. The point is, I was irritated. It was a Wednesday, which was a Friday, since the Thursday in question was a holiday. Also because I had shifted the Friday classes to Wednesday, to give all us rustic dudes a long weekend to wear crazy costumes, paint ourselves in myriad colors and go around shouting 'Pongalooooo Pongal'. The point of course, is that sitting in class on any day that precedes a holiday is pure torture. Then again, of late, sitting in class is pure torture.

My department is something of a paradox. The paradox, of course, is that it exists. It's also a very interesting setting for statistical analysis - what are the odds, you wonder, of having the most inane minds in the world cooped up in a single department? Irony would also find himself at home - it is, inexplicably, among most vaunted department in college.

That's not to say we don't have good teachers. It is to say we have too many bad ones.

Anyway, the point being that sometimes the drill gets to you, and you do crazy things. Some people gesticulate, others pinch the guy next to them, others sing and still others appreciate them. Most scribble and nod idly at the teacher. Many message. A few even finish off their con-calls during particularly insipid times. Reports claim that a minority even try paying attention, sick with the world and wanting deliverance.

I decided to put all that irritation to good use, and write a couplet every class I feel bored. Ergo, this, the first in the series affectionately and optimistically titled, Rhyme Sine Dine. The title for this one is, "The one with bananas and tails"

The one with bananas and tails.

He will move mountains
Swallow whole seas
Maybe once we wean him
Away from his trees.

His grading is clairvoyant
Do not whine and weep
The first semester will say
What the last one keeps.

Ignorance courts incompetence
Ego is strife
Us inured - In his classroom,
This is life.

Kutty: Big heart, small movie...

Coming home for a festival is partly driven by the lure of the movies. And going to the movies is partly driven by the as-yet unfulfilled desire to see a mature, intelligent and engrossing mainstream Tamil movie. So it was, that after watching Kutty, the feeling was not so-near-yet-so-far as we're-getting-there.

"Kutty" stars Dhanush and Shriya. To be perfectly fair, it also stars a Telugu-film script. However, unequivocally, the star of the show is Dhanush. A rousing performance - in right parts lively, loquacious, childish and, particularly in the climax, tear-jerking. Where he is let down, though, is everywhere else - the co-stars are undoubtedly terrible, the BGM makes a mockery of things and the editing people clearly went on leave. The movie is at least half an hour too long, and not a single song was required (nor appreciated). In a nutshell, this is a Dhanush show -a feel-good movie that, like his previous, Yaaradi Nee Mohini, weans him away from the street-urchin type roles and establishes him as an entertaining, talented and more importantly today, tolerable actor.

The story is heart wrenching or absurd, depending on if you're a romantic or not. The pampered, buff, athletic and cigarette sporting blockhead-with-a-stubble Arjun (some model who strayed onto the sets, clearly) decides he 'wants' Gita (Shriya) to love him. When she, in an act of Tamil cinema blasphemy, refuses, he is incensed and threatens to jump off a very tall clock tower (His 'fakes' in this scene are priceless). An intelligent choice to draw a crowd, as the time is perhaps something most college students do diligently strive to know. Anyway, a crowd of students (mostly female) implore Gita to oblige him, "It's just one I love you!" which she does. There enters Kutty - a happy-go-lucky, well meaning and charming. The rest of the movie deals with Kutty doing everything to express his love for Gita, getting on Arjun's nerves, being the selfless dude who lets everything pass for his 'lovers' sake etc etc etc.

The character sketching is terrible. The portrayal is worse. While Dhanush, as mentioned before, does a splendid job, even Kutty suffers from neglection - Who is he, where are his parents, who's that old man (who gets to hand-feed Shriya medicine)? Gita is shown initially to be sensitive and sensible, yet increasingly becomes a raving, stereotypical filmi girl who changes character over the course of a song. Shriya's acting has not changed much, meaning she still looks gorgeously constipated when trying to cry. Arjun was, clearly, abandoned as a gone-case and hence no scriptwriting time was wasted on him. The character of Shruthi was woefully under-developed, as 'best friend of the girl', she does nothing except be the butt of Kutty's jokes (until the climax, at least)

A special mention about Shriya's costumes in the movie - while probably the most (and best) clothed she has been since her movie debut, one wonders how she packed so many clothes, and matching earrings, into a bag that small. Ideas are welcome - I struggle with my luggage every few weeks and am always receptive to novel ways of packing. Further, her night-attire was frankly ridiculous. Nobody in the world would wear that much make up to bed, and, ahem.. welll... to be subtle, sleeping was never such an uplifting experience.

A small kostin. With her hairstyle and costume, and frequent references as 'machi', most moviegoers were stumped - was it a he-friend, or a she-friend? Either way, no laughs were wasted at her (the Lollu Sabha heroine's) expense.

The music was horrible through the movie. Every song reminded me of Santosh Subramaniam, the last Devi Sri Prasad movie I cared to hear. The BGM was *TERRIBLE* and many a touching scene were spoiled by a long, lazy, high-strung, mundane violin solo.

The accent of the actors (or should I say, of the dubbing artists) were unbearable. Coupled with inane dialogues and plastic faces, things got pretty irritating round the middle. Arjun probably looks good, though his standard expression would burn quite a few calories, with him flexing muscles and squinting when delivering every dialogue. His gesticulations and screaming was frankly irritating, and can't filmmakers see that even Prakash Raj has killed off his Ghilli routine? ("Dei... Neee...Enna sonna? Enna Sonna? Nee enna sonna? *snore*) The only other notable performer was Arjun's friend, the same person who was in Vaettaikaaran, if I'm not wrong.

The camera work was amazing... rich and colorful. Editing was good when it was done, but towards the end one got the feeling the editing team went on leave - the second half was just too long-drawn.

Kutty is small movie with a big heart. With better casting, better acting, better music and stricter editing, this could have been one of the great candyfloss movies. As such, the movie is passable, and after his amazing (though slightly overboard) performance in the climax, which, for the first time for a long time gave me a throat-lump in a Tamil movie, one comes away feeling that the movie is a must watch, just for Dhanush.