Vidaamuyarchi: Ajith-Trisha Thriller Doesn’t Fully Commit To Its Genre
| Vidaamuyarchi is a genre film: a road action thriller where the thrills need to be earned. And it does a commendable job of establishing terrain as well as characters, Aditya Shrikrishna reviews.
| | | | | Cast: Ajith Kumar, Trisha Krishnan, Arjun Sarja, Regina Cassandra | | | | MAGIZH THIRUMENI’s Vidaamuyarchi , starring Ajith Kumar, Trisha Krishnan, Arjun Sarja and Regina Cassandra, adapts from Jonathan Mostow’s 1997 film Breakdown . The premise and several plot events are similar, but Magizh’s additions and adornments do stand out as one would expect in an Indian version with a huge star in the lead. Just look at the length of both the films: Breakdown clocks at a crisp 93 minutes. Vidaamuyarchi is 150 minutes. Make of that what you will. This film places itself in the highways, cafes and rest stops of Azerbaijan with Ajith’s Arjun living in Baku with his wife Kayal (Trisha). Their relationship is 12 years old, and we get some quick flashbacks, choppily written, to establish history. Magizh wants to present an adult relationship, something his mentor Gautham Vasudev Menon managed to do in Yennai Arindhaal with the same actors. It works to an extent in the present-day portions when the relationship is crumbling, they deal with slow erosion like mature individuals. But in the flashback, it is unwieldy. The dialogues don’t pop the way adult romantic lines should; it is edited to be concise, but the pattern is shoddy, the cadence is off, and it is clear that the actors are working with mediocre material. | | | Thandel Is A Dry & Dated Melodrama
| Naga Chaitanya and Sai Pallavi starrer Thandel is the best bad film in all the oldest ways possible. Apart from Pallavi, everyone and everything is artificial including the filmmaking.
| | | | | Cast: Naga Chaitanya, Sai Pallavi | | | | IN CHANDOO MONDETI'S Thandel , distance makes romance sing harder before it combusts into a residue of tears. Raju (Naga Chaitanya) and Satya (Sai Pallavi) have been together since childhood and now their love blossoms through the stray mobile tower. Raju is a seafarer, a fisherman who works the waters around Gujarat while Satya in Srikakulam looks longingly at her mobile phone to hear a syllable in his voice. He holds the phone aloft and so does she at home. He, with ocean on all sides and, she, on land but not far from the beach. We see a fisherfolk community that toils in the waters, the men away for long and the women waiting and working at home. We know that this frequent separation will not end well and as expected, Thandel doesn’t hold its cards too close to its chest. It presents everything without a facade.
Raju is our regular Telugu film hero, and this is as mainstream as it gets so he is introduced romancing and fighting at the same time. The first half coasts along and nothing really happens for much of Thandel’ s runtime. Physical distance gives way to emotional distance between the lovers but the way the film narrativises these events is toothless. The film places itself in melodramatic territory, the star-crossed lovers’ separation is the whole point, but the writing is flat and we never feel for any of these people. Apart from Sai Pallavi, everyone and everything is artificial including the filmmaking. It is probably forgivable to use a green screen for scenes atop a lighthouse, but Satya is staged in front of what looks like a green screen even for a scene on the terrace of her tiny dwelling. The film looks cheap and when even basic scenes are given this little attention then what to make of stormy seas where there are both fights as well as lifesaving actio n. — AS | | | Mrs: The Great Indian Kitchen Adaptation Is Just As Effective
| If Mrs stands on its own feet, it is because an actor like Sanya Malhotra has its back, writes Ishita Sengupta.
| | | | | Cast: Sanya Malhotra, Nishant Dahiya, Kanwaljit Singh | | | | AARTI KADAV'S Mrs is an adaptation of Jeo Baby’s The Great Indian Kitchen . Like the 2021 Malayalam-language film, it unfolds largely within the precincts of a kitchen and focuses on the labour of cooking to underscore the stilted gendered act it is in a patriarchal society. In Baby’s film, the rot is so insidious that no one is outrightly villainised yet the narrative builds up to an arc of rebellion. Kadav’s outing reiterates every beat; any accompanying exhaustion is offset by the fact that a film like The Great Indian Kitchen , whose only conflict is gender disparity, is being retold in another language and backed by a major studio.
Richa (Sanya Malhotra) lives in Delhi with her parents. The opening credit has her dancing to a song (to her own beats) till an arranged marriage set up is revealed. Two pairs of eyes meet while sharing Wi-Fi password and soon Richa and Diwakar (Nishant Dahiya) get married. In her in-laws house, Richa’s designated spot is the kitchen. She takes it up without qualms. She has seen her mother do it, she can see her mother-in-law do it. Diwakar is a doctor and his schedule dictates the lives of the women in the family. His father, a retired doctor (Kanwaljit Singh) likes things a certain way. His wife follows that and Richa too has to abide. | | | The one newsletter you need to decide what to watch on any given day. Our editors pick a show, movie, or theme for you from everything that’s streaming on OTT. | | Each week, our editors pick one long-form, writerly piece that they think is worthy of your attention, and dice it into easily digestible bits for you to mull over. | | In which we invite a scholar of cinema, devotee of the moving image, to write a prose poem dedicated to their poison of choice. Expect to spend an hour on this. | | | Hindustan Media Ventures Limited,
Hindustan Times House, 18-20,
Second Floor, Kasturba Gandhi
Marg, New Delhi - 110 001, India | | | Liked this newsletter? Forward it, or share using the buttons below! | If you need any guidance or support along the way, please send an email to ottplay@htmedialabs.com . We’re here to help! | ©️2024 OTTplay, HT Media Labs. All rights reserved. | | | |
