Forged: Karthi, Prakash Raj, Aditi Shankar,
Director: M Muthaiah
In director Muthaiah’s oddly structured Viruman, there are not any costs for guessing how the movie would finish. Proper from the primary scene which begins with a public battle between father (Prakash Raj) and son Viruman (Karthi), the movie establishes a wobbly basis on high of which it dispenses a sequence of parts you want in such a movie. Greater than a cohesive screenplay that has to organically make room for fights, comedy, and a love angle, in Viruman, these parts really feel too pressured in what’s truly a household drama. With its requirement to first serve its hero and solely then the screenplay, Viruman will get misplaced within the center. It’s not massy sufficient to work as a star automobile neither is it weepy sufficient to work as a sentimental household drama.
Viruman works just about on the essential plot of King Lear. A egocentric father, his many kids, and the concept that solely one among them really loves him. Munisamy (Prakash Raj) performs this father and his energy comes from the truth that he’s additionally the native Tahsildar. Corrupt and egocentric, he dangles the carrot of his wealth over his sons to maintain them and their wives in management. Viruman, who selected to go away his father to stay together with his uncle, has at all times hated his father’s methods and prefers to be often called his mom’s son.
At first, this equation between father and son is performed for laughs with each argument leading to a punchline that has Viruman getting the higher of his father. The rationale for this bitterness is withheld for a really very long time as a result of these comedic bits should work. However lastly, when the reason being given, it’s what you had predicated an hour in the past, making the lengthy flashback unnecessarily lengthy.
For a movie that tries nearly nothing new, the one innovation appears to be within the type of its screenplay construction. It will get a 90-minute first half which then shrinks to simply over an hour within the second half. This makes the primary half really feel like a lifetime with its hero introduction battle+tune, the heroine introduction scene+tune, and the institution of a battle+flashback. It’s overstuffed with a little bit of every little thing with nothing a lot to handle later.
This makes the second half really feel hole and rushed with Viruman merely serving to after which fixing one member of the family after one other. He simply has an excessive amount of work to do and too many locations to be. A purpose why we by no means really feel the feelings in these scenes is the best way these characters are launched to us within the first half. In a Pandiraj movie, the director spends a whole lot of time early on establishing not simply the household dynamics, but in addition every character. In Viruman, with its must additionally work as a mass movie, the time spent establishing relations just isn’t sufficient for us to take care of them. So when Viruman does one thing nice by serving to his older brother, we hardly even know the person, not to mention care about his canteen enterprise.
That is true even for the opposite relationships within the movie. For instance, the movie has many scenes that preserve speaking about Viruman’s affection and respect for his uncle (performed by Raj Kiran) who remained single to take care of him. However these stay bits of data with out a single scene that makes us really feel the bond between these two individuals. And when that occurs in a household drama, there’s not a lot you must maintain on to.
But what makes Viruman moderately straightforward to sit down by are the performances of each Karthi and Aditi Shankar. The scenes between the each of them really feel like the one occasions in a boring movie. These are additionally the parts the place the movie isn’t making an attempt too onerous to be greater than what it’s. There’s a lightness right here and Aditi Shankar feels proper at residence when she has to mix romance with comedy.
The remainder feels too handy and predictable with characters altering their mindset far too simply and with an ending that’s too primary to present us any closure. With such selections, it’s a movie you’ll look again at years later with out having the ability to bear in mind its title. They could as properly have named it Kadaikutty Komban.