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This cupid is stupid
Highlights
How much can you exploit from a source or a situation which has been almost milked to death? How good is it to have a hangover from a previous release, xeroxing its ambience superficially and also repeating the director who was instrumental in making that own production venture a big success? These questions may be haunting Dhanush who has had a bilingual release this week, the Telugu version titled Nava Manmadhudu daring to squeeze in its shows between two mammoth Hindi releases.
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How much can you exploit from a source or a situation which has been almost milked to death? How good is it to have a hangover from a previous release, xeroxing its ambience superficially and also repeating the director who was instrumental in making that own production venture a big success? These questions may be haunting Dhanush who has had a bilingual release this week, the Telugu version titled ‘Nava Manmadhudu’ daring to squeeze in its shows between two mammoth Hindi releases.
With the PYT of the season Amy Jackson on one side and a fully-draped Samantha on the other, Dhanush sets sail with a restrained role of a ‘thanga magan’ (The Tamil original which means golden son) for his family which has to cope up with the sudden death of his father, in a baffling case of suicide.
With the society shunning him and his kith and kin for the purported fraud committed by his dead daddy, our hero is seen working with a petty street vendor, selling egg biryani, adding to the melodrama. The entire 121-minute film, which sees him revel in that street-smart, borderline vagabond role that he brings to life very well, rests itself on his unraveling the mystery behind the death and the people responsible for it.
Yes, it could have been a rare blend of family drama and crime suspense, a sort of a whodunit with duets and tears thrown in at the right moments. It would have also suited Dhanush to go for a new role, fresh from the high-octane performance in ‘Maari’, in which he played the local goonda to killing perfection, with dance and machoism to boot.
The director does neither and allows a very sedate, irritatingly jejune beginning to the film which sees the hero furiously wooing the foreign-looking Amy Jackson and succeeding in it only to lose her to his cousin. The family sub- plots bug the viewer as much as the dated and old world treatment of all the main characters— Samantha, K S Ravi Kumar, the director-turned- actor and Radhikaa— reminding many of the late ‘80s world view of the then film directors.
The proceedings are routinely done; Dhanush is just about adequate while Samantha shows that she can come up with a good performance, within her limits, playing the docile housewife and the hero’s love interest too. Amy for one has a screen presence for most part of the film, giving way to Samantha in the later part, but fulfils the fantasy element of the love interest who cannot stay away from the hero.
The hotshot Anirudh Ravichander disappoints for his part by coming up with no good songs to recall and enjoy for its repeat value. A meandering, jerky, unconvincing dubbed venture of this kind thus disappoints in the end.
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