A plot from the ancient Sanskrit epic Ramayana entwined with the tale of Indian Robin Hood, notorious dacoit Veerappan makes Raavanan aka Raavan.
Though Aishwarya Rai traces her ancestry back to a small village in the South India, it feels like she is the Alice in Wonderland in Raavanan.A square peg on a round hole. Adding insult to injury is the missing chemistry of this beauty with Ram and Raavan. All the director needed was a girl next door head turner but by casting Aishwarya he ended up with a supreme cosmopolitan edition that just didn’t gel well.
She is too sophisticated for the Ragini/Kuruvamma that the director has tried to showcase through her with an incredible amount of over action. She is no longer a delight to watch on the silver screen - the awkward wrinkles on the still flawless creamy face add to the distress. The only solace is her ability to move her feet and body effortlessly to the mesmerizing tunes of the Mozart of Madras!!
Why is Mani obsessed with the Bachchan family? He seems to be hibernating for ever and once in 3 years when he wakes up and decides to grace his audience, he gets stuck with the B's. Hasn't he learnt his lessons from the earlier stunts?
Vikram has finally got a break after his series of box office fiascos. But for the familiar animal sounds which reminded me of Ko Ko Ko Ko kandhaaa, Raavanan is a character neatly crafted and written for Vikram. I am mentally paralyzed to imagine a different soul performing this role, let alone the junior B.
The rule of thumb is if the hero is an agitated dude, he HAS to have a flashback and if you happen to see a second heroine name on the title card who hasn't made her appearance until intermission, she HAS to be a sexually harassed sister whose death episode will explain the hero's psychotic actions.
Every director plants this masterpiece in their venture with the idea that they are exploring a virginal territory. What they fail to see or choose to ignore is how much they have tired the audience out becoming easily predictable with an overall accomplishment of losing their credibility. Mani has also fallen a prey to this atrociously moronic meat scheme. Priyamani with her little over 15 minute appearance leaves a better impression that most of the other characters.
Karthik - Prabu, the once popular duo who created a sensation with the same director nearly 2 decades ago in Agni Natchathiram have come together in this movie only to paint a downright sorry picture. Karthik who plays the Hanuman and Prabu the Kumbakarnan equivalents could have easily been avoided as neither the actors nor their roles were pivotal.
Raavan's saving grace is ARR and the cinematographer. Both have made a significant contribution which is probably the only accolade for the movie. The picturisation of the whole movie aided with an exceptionally accurate music is truly an audio-visual enchantment.
Sketching a story line based on excerpt from already popular mythological stories or political happenings seems to be the trademark of the director. Its time to bid farewell to this formula or at least park it aside for a few years and hit the spot with a romantic feast.
Raavanan is creative yet simply a wander over the conceptual landscape.
wonderful review meena....im a big fan of ur reviews....
ReplyDelete2 blogs I really enjoy for its standard is Shobhaa De's and then yours :) good one
ReplyDeleteFantastic language and great write-up, although I know nothing about this movie!!. Loved reading it for your writing and presentation skills!!.
ReplyDeleteSet aside the locations and fit the characters in a city.........this movie reminds of so many earlier movies. With one flashback ragini finds her tilting towards raavan.....unbelivable.....with that falshback one can feel for the unjustice done....but mani's content to make ragini see raavan in a different shade doesn't make sense. It makes the character more vulnerable, than a normal person, which is not supposed to be. Earlier mani's movies made us feel the epic unknowingly and that was his success .......which misses out here. Vikram has done good....but not his best.....he has to surpass pithamagan(that last angry cry still haunts my ears) for it.He will do it, but needs refreshing new directors, to take him to new shades. Good movie for Prithviraj too, but mani hadn't given a thought that such a high ranked and successful cop would have some great intelligence too!!!Good thing is he didn't go outside india....took the risk of showing the hidden beauties of india.
ReplyDeleteIn our movies, a good person with some grey shades is easily turned down from his hero status and a bad guy with selected good shade is projected as a hero. Not the right prespective, i suppose. Miss the trade mark of sujatha too.Mani is best in biography's, in other areas has a great competition to be on top. Making a sensitive movie for different zones of audiences has made his work double and skills half .Oh who's blog is it anyway.....i have been writing too much.(konjam edam koduthaa..avalathaan)
As usual, a really nice review. But I still feel you have been charitable. There is just one word to sum up this movie – Awful. There have been few movies in my life that I have actually counted the minutes for the ordeal to be over. This was one of them. The biggest let down was that you couldn’t connect with any of the characters and the movie just was not involving forget about engrossing. The chemistry between the co-stars was so poor, you were left to wonder if they were all going of the same script. Just think back, can you even remember that Prithviraj and Ash were married. They were mismatched so badly, it was too odd.
ReplyDeletePrabhu and Karthik are indeed the ‘fatso’ and ‘monkey’ on screen and in real life. They successfully went ahead to make jack asses of themselves (especially Karthik who had that stupid monkey cap on, so that they could save on wigs for this guy), that Agni N seemed like a million years ago. The first scene for baldy Karthik was ridiculous with him jumping through all those trees, that he should have been fitted with a tail. I would give Vikram a ‘P’ at most for providing the few good scenes. Actually, the only time there was some tempo in the movie was when Priyamani’s part came up. By the way she actually pipped Ash ‘Aunty’ in the looks department. I think it is time for Ash to move into elder sister, mother roles and finally into the social security program (read Sun TV or Star TV serials). And the less said about Ash’s acting the better.
I don’t agree that the music and cinematography were redeeming features. The music from ARR was sub-par/underwhelming except maybe for the very first song with Ash and Vikram. And if you really want to see nature sites, as I read somewhere, the National Geographic channel is available in its full splendor. What a movie needs is an engrossing story, with a tight script and narration where you actually start empathizing with the characters. I think, personally, I even empathized with some of the tear drenched actoresses in the Sun TV serials I was forced to watch the last few weeks (thanx to my parents being in town), than any of the (non)-characters in Raavanan. I don’t know what the principal villain of this movie – step forward Mr. Super Director, Mani Rathnam – was thinking when making this movie.
All in all, a big let down. What makes it stick in your throat even more is the caliber of the director and the star cast which has managed to dish out this tripe. If this is the drivel Mani Rathnam can come up with after all these years, we might as well give tamil cinema an honorable burial!!