Solid: Santhanam, Athulya Chandra, Pradeep Singh Rawat
Director: Rathna Kumar
Thamizh Padam designed a narrative that was a string of spoofs, and Enakku Innoru Per Irukku infused spoofs inside its personal story – each these movies caught to their style and model of comedy all through the narrative. However Gulu Gulu is a slightly madcap entry to Tamil cinema’s spoof-verse. It stands aside for the way it tries to transcend genres whereas parodying alongside severe messaging. However for probably the most half, it isn’t profitable in its try.
Rathna Kumar’s third characteristic is nearly as unpredictable as his filmography. It’s a couple of character named Gulu Bhai who personifies the search engine his title is derived from (Google). You by no means know what you’re going to search out whereas spending time with him. His nature to assist causes each prosperity and adversity. It’s an ingenious thought of a personality, however the movie appears impressed at this sapling of an thought and doesn’t fairly flesh it sufficient to be affecting.
Gulu is designed as a passive protagonist whose presence will remodel these round him, whereas he doesn’t undergo a lot of a change himself. He additionally lives each day like his final, so he’ll ensure he’s useful sufficient to fellow people on the drop of a hat. However that he doesn’t trigger a lot of a change throughout the band of attention-grabbing individuals he interacts with, is what lessens his impression as a personality.
Santhanam has already performed his justifiable share of parodies as a comic, and he will get to partake in the identical as a definite character right here. However he doesn’t fairly deliver a lot pleasure to the desk as a performer. The deadpan supply of his Amazon-forest sob-story works, whereas the load within the politics of language that he addresses, is barely touching. The funniest bits of his are those that look and sound like a spoof of KGF, which once more isn’t stunning since he’s so accustomed to doing cosplay parodies.
There’s outstanding critiquing of the members of the ruling class occurring within the movie, with digs geared toward power-hungry cops, caste-flaunting householders, and patriarchal fathers. The simplest makes an attempt at social commentary come from the feminine characters. Vadivu exposing her father’s incapability to distinguish between consensual and non-consensual publicity of her physique, is kind of a stunning change in a tradition the place a father-condemning-daughter joke is often aimed to play on the male gallery. Matilda’s scathing remark about how her good friend’s romantic desperation is not any much less perverted than an abuser makes for an additional advanced level raised to good impact. However these situations do go away me questioning in the event that they’d have at the very least registered the message higher with a satirical tone slightly than switching to a practical one.
Vadivu can also be the one character who will get a pronounced arc within the movie, and that makes one surprise in regards to the potential of the script had there been extra arcs throughout the narrative, particularly ones enabled by Gulu. George Maryan’s character transforms over a momentary trauma flashback, which is respectful of the viewers by telling his backstory in a flash of a second, however the timing of it’s so last-moment that it doesn’t present the supposed emotional excessive.
Miser boomer kidnappers, Kuriyeedu Kumaru, a PUB-G addict gangster – these make for comedy gold, however they work higher as brief sketches than as characters on this wild-goose-chase narrative. There are completely absurd conditions too, from the gun-wielding Chinese language avid gamers to the stretch involving a pay-and-use rest room. However the originality of those absurdities isn’t felt within the delivery tanker yard climax that’s as generic as one might get, even when it’s meant to be learn as a spoof. It will get numbing when we’ve a flame-thrower, lightsabers, a zombie, and wolverine claws, all thrown right into a single set-piece that’s attempting very laborious to be random. Probably the most memorable beat the place a gag actually earns its presence comes on the interval, the place we first see a parody of the “mass” group stroll, solely to return to an precise “mass” second of the identical stroll, after a profitable motion block.
Rathna Kumar crowds the narrative with so many characters, that the time wanted to flesh out and maintain all these transferring components turns into its undoing, despite their humorous designs. It doesn’t assist that he continues to introduce new individuals within the chase even because it approaches its closing moments. The movie doesn’t broaden on the emotional potential of its protagonist, in the end shedding Gulu and his politics to a lesser plot surrounding a primary gangster chase.