Varanam Aayiram – Movie Review

I am going to make this as short as I possibly can – unlike Gautham Menon (the director) who has tried to include an entire life history within his movie.

Varanam Aayiram (Thousand elephants -my friend Deepa will probably blog about the title in her blog post at http://dewdropdeepa.blogspot.com/) tells the story of the hero’s (Surya) love for his father (Surya). Yep, he plays a double role ensuring that there is not even a single frame where he is not present. I like Surya, so this is not necessarily a bad thing ! But, even Surya cannot carry off curly hair, seventies square-rimmed glasses, and Michael Jackson-esque flowing locks and hat. Yup, he appears in these getups in a flash-back romancing Simran who is decked up like Sharmila Tagore. Awful ! that entire song should have been cut on the editing table.

Apart from these eyesore moments, the film is beautiful cinematographically. San Francisco (especially the shots of the Golden Gate bridge) is simply awesome. The people look good (even Sameera Reddy) who looks lovely with very less makeup and very preppy everyday wear clothes. What a difference from her awful look and acting in Race ! The Sameera Reddy fan in our group (I didn’t know she even had one) had a very dreamy smile for quite some time after the movie :). Such a pity for him that she got killed off before the interval only 😀

The songs in the movie are melodious and picturised well. However, there are too many of them, and they make an already long movie even longer.

My beef with this movie is – it reflects the normal everyday life way too much, and automatically the plot is not very interesting. It moves at its own pace, just like normal day-to-day life. The audience (at least I was) empathizing with the son’s grief and memories of his dead father, just like we would listen to a friend verbalizing about his father who has died. Caring and sharing, but not particularly enjoying the moment. And, in the end, this is why, I failed to enjoy this movie.