Patchaikili Muthucharam – A review

Every time Gautham Menon makes a movie, he makes me cringe. He has this amazing ability to come up with an interesting plot and then find an ingenious way to screw it up.

Patchaikili Muthucharam starts badly, gathers pace, reaches a high and then fizzles out. Gautham is obviously in a haste to bring in his favorite actress. So, a receptionalist has to say that Sarath Kumar is flirty, for us to know that he is. Sarath Kumar has to tell us he is crazy about his wife, for us to know that he is. Indian cinema has always relied more on dialogues than emoting and scenes to get the message across. And then Sarath Kumar looks completely lost here. So this entire first act looks contrived, but Gautham can be forgiven for the next one hour makes you sit up.

This is Gautham’s ode to Jyothika. This is as much her movie as Sarath Kumar’s and Gautham has tried his best to give her big farewell. She acts well in parts, but doesn’t really manage to get more than a couple of expressions. But the plot unfolds well, if you can forgive the acting. Sarath Kumar comes up with a really subdued performance and he delivers and this hour makes up for the most interesting part of the movie. The reasons and the set up for Sarath Kumar and Jyothika to cheat on their respective spouses is much better than movies like KANK. The places, the dialogues (most of what I could hear from the crappy print) and the situations are very believable.

And then the twist. I think Gautham realized that almost everybody would have guessed it by now and so does not make a big deal about. But I think that is also the reason why the movie dragged on for another half hour.

The funny thing is that this movie will again be touted as really sound movie and will get raving reviews. I can take it when a really crappy movie becomes a huge hit, but I find it really difficult to digest the fact that what could have been a great movie, fails to deliver and still gets touted as a great movie. For some reason that bugs the hell out of me.

Bombay Jayashree is mesmerizing …

Critics

The last decade saw the entry of Hollywood movies in India in a big way. Not all kinds of Hollywood movies, but a select few, that distributors thought the Indian audience could relate to. They were usually action flicks, a few comedies and children’s movies. You can add a few academy award winning movies to that. This created an audience which renounced the so-called Indian movies completely. To them the Indian movies were brash, corny and completely stupid. And they went around claiming that they hated these Indian movies. People who claimed they enjoyed the Indian (read Bollywood) movies were looked down upon.

But there seems to be a reversal in the trend today. With India gaining popularity in the global stage and everything Indian being cool, the Indian movies are getting their fifteen minutes of fame. Today, to sound original and different, you have to say that you enjoy Indian movies. You can say that they are loud, brash, over emotional, illogical and lengthy and still conclude that you love Indian movies for the same reasons you just complained about. You can also go on to say how they really reflect the Indian culture and our emotions and how much you appreciate them for it.

And most of this is generated by the media. Why?

An idea for a reality TV show

Have you noticed that be it sports, entertainment or politics (probably to a lesser extent in politics), the questions asked by the media sound the same, and in most cases repeated? And this has been going on for a while now and the person being interviewed gives the same clichéd answers?

I think it would be a good idea to come up with a reality show where the TV channel picks a celebrity (for lack of a better word) a week and invites viewers to mail them a bunch of questions they would like to ask the celebrity. The person with the most interesting set of questions gets to interview the celebrity on the next show.

But the one loop hole with this program would come in from who makes the selections. If it’s the same bunch of journalists, you already know what the questions are.

But I still think this would make for an interesting show.