Tag Archives: Nassar

Iddarammayilatho

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Iddarammayilatho

I haven’t been too impressed with the last few Puri Jagannadh films I’ve seen, but I was hopeful that this latest offering starring my favourite hero might offer something a little different.  But although the film is visually very pretty and both Bunny and Amala Paul do their best with their respective characters, the story has far too many plot holes and is frequently too unbelievable to make Iddarammayilathi anything other than disappointing.  While there is the expected excellent dancing from the stylish star, some good fight scenes and Bunny and Amala make a sweet couple, it’s just not enough to make up for the screechy, irritating Catherine Tresa and a dire comedy track which almost completely derails the film in the second half.

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The film follows Akanksha (Catherine Tresa), the daughter of a prominent politician in  India (Rao Ramesh) who moves to Barcelona to study psychology.  She has a fantastic room which just happens to contain a box belonging to the last tenant.  Inside is a diary which tells the story of a romance between Sanju (Allu Arjun) and the room’s previous occupant, Komali (Amala Paul).  The romance is played out in flash-back as Akanksha talks endlessly to herself about the diary’s revelations and frankly seems far too interested in the details of a stranger’s love life.

Iddarammayilatho

Bunny looks great as Sanju Reddy, a singer/dancer who performs with his band in the streets of Barcelona and is surprisingly successful considering that the band seems to perform exclusively in Telugu in a Spanish/Catalan speaking city.  He’s also pretty nifty when it comes to the obligatory biffo although his prowess in this area is never really explained – but then neither is anything else so at least there is consistency in the lack of elucidation.  Sanju falls in love with Komali who is in Barcelona to learn classical music from Brahmi – again, completely nonsensical but there is even more absurdity to follow.  Amala does a good job as a demure and rather shy violinist apart from being completely unable to fake playing a violin.  She does look stunning though in some beautiful costumes and has good chemistry with Bunny so at least the romance part of the story is believable.

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For a change I really liked Bunny’s various outfits too, which aren’t as over the top as his last few films and do appear fashionable with a European touch.  Most of the songs by Devi Sri Prasad are fairly average, but the choreography is good if not exceptional and Bunny as always proves he really can dance. However a dance off between the classically influenced Brahmi and the more rock and roll Sanju would have been much better if the backing dancers had been able to keep up with the choreography.  There is a short tribute to Chiru’s Gangleader which got the biggest cheers from the Melbourne crowd, but this was my favourite:

The love story ends abruptly in the diary so Akanksha tracks down Sanju to find out what happened and learns of a tragedy that occurred when Sanju and Komali crossed paths with a gangster (Shawar Ali). Shawar Ali has to be the dullest and most incompetent villain ever and it’s surely only by chance that Komali is the only person who sees him execute one of his gang on an incredibly public beach in broad daylight.  Unbelievably, it takes all the might of his gang of assorted thugs, sword-wielding ninjas and Subbaraju in a rather dapper beanie to deal with one petite classical violinist and her guitar playing boyfriend!

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 While Akanksha shrilly indulges in flagrant scenery chewing and desperately tries to persuade Sanju to fall in love with her, Sanju has his own agenda for revenge which ends up with a surprisingly good and effective plot twist with a flashback to some of those awesome sword fighting techniques from Badrinath.  Overall, apart from the woeful comedy scenes with Brahmi and Ali, the second half moves faster and is a little better than the first, although that may just be that I stopped worrying about the lack of logic and settled back to enjoy Bunny’s dancing and the fact that he does look as if he can actually play a guitar.  The fight scenes by Kecha are also beautifully choreographed and appear more like dancing than fighting, an effect which is heightened by Sanju’s total lack of emotion as he calmly and efficiently despatches everything and everyone that is thrown at him.

Iddarammayilatho

Iddarammayilatho looks beautiful and cinematographer Amol Rathod makes the most of the location in Barcelona, showcasing some of the beautiful buildings in the city, but the film is let down by a complete lack of logic in the story and very little in the way of character development .  Although the cast in general put in good performances, most of the supporting mothers, fathers etc have very little to do and both Subbaraju and Srinivas Reddy are chronically underused.  Brahmi is fine in the first half but the comedy with Ali is totally pointless and almost as irritating as Catherine Tresa.  Perhaps understanding the dialogue might have made Akanksha a more appealing character, but somehow I doubt it.  I still enjoyed the film, but more for the location, action scenes and dance numbers which were all good.  Overall, Iddarammayilatho is worth a look for Allu Arjun fans and anyone who likes movies with pretty scenery and great architecture.

Iddarammayilatho

Mr Perfect

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There really is only word to describe Mr Perfect, and that is boring. That’s not just because we couldn’t understand much of the dialogue either, there was just nothing at all to keep our interest in this very predictable and slow-moving romance.

Mr Perfect starts in Sydney with Prabhas as Vicky, a computer game developer who has dreams of running his own company with his friends. Straight away there is a rather inexplicable fight in a pool with some Europeans – French? Or possibly Belgian? They certainly sounded more like Inspector Clouseau than any Australians we know. After some rather impressive ‘Man from Atlantis’ impressions by Prabhas and his jet-propelled feet the action moves on to various parts of Sydney. He and his friends spend a lot of time hanging around various landmarks but never really doing any of the work that is supposedly their dream. He goes back to India for his sister’s wedding, and meets Priya  (Kajal Aggarwal), a childhood companion. A flashback introduces the idea that Vicky needs to learn the art of compromise and explains to some extent the animosity between the two.

Over time Priya’s likeable personality wins Vicky over but he decides that he can’t possibly remove Priya from her family or her obviously happy life in India, and he won’t leave his life of aimless wandering around Sydney. Vicky keeps insisting that he will not compromise, but we don’t know what sparks these speeches as really people are only asking him to have some manners and be considerate which is hardly the end of the world. He’s such a grumpy, argumentative man who falls into fights for no reason whatsoever.  There is some attempt at comedy involving Brahmi as an uncle who is trying to get rid of Vicky, and also some funnier moments involving Master Bharath but none of it works very well. There are some good points though.  This part of the film in India was beautifully shot and there were some lovely moments with Priya and her family. The teasing and banter between Priya and Vicky is also amusing, even without understanding the dialogue, and Prabhas and Kajal have excellent chemistry.

Vicky heads back to Sydney and through the wonders of product placement meets Maggie who is his ideal partner – or so he thinks. Her family disapprove of Vicky, mainly due to his brattish and immature habit of arguing with everyone senior to him. It really made us wonder how he would ever manage to run a business successfully! There were more Europeans in Sydney – this time Dutch we think – and a stylist who really didn’t like Taapsee. This is one of the better outfits as sadly we can’t find any of the really terrible ones.

After more confrontations and more inexplicable, although very nicely choreographed fights (thanks to Peter Hein) Maggie’s father challenges Vicky in order to win his support for their marriage. At a wedding somewhere that wasn’t Sydney or India, but may possibly have been Malaysia both Maggie and Priya are present and Vicky has to decide between the two. And really that was it – most of which could have been condensed into an hour and saved us from the never-ending drama of the second half.

A word on Prabhas’ styling in the film – which was really quite terrible. But not terrible enough to be interesting. Dressed in far too many designer T’s, which looked to have come straight from the street markets of Bangkok, worn over the top of plaid shirts, this really was not the best look for him at all. He looked awkward and overdressed in the various layers especially when seen next to Kajal who looked beautiful in some lovely saris.

Overall, the whole story was predictable with far too many contrived ‘chance’ meetings and co-incidences. Prabhas character was essentially unlikable and had no convincing relationship with his family. In fact the scenes with his father (Nassar) and mother in Australia were much more reminiscent of a live-in boarder rather than an only son. At least in ‘Orange’ the hero’s decision never to compromise and to live life on his own terms blah blah blah was given a context so while you might not empathise with him, there was at least a reason. Here there was nothing – just a lot of attitude. The interactions with his friends were a little more convincing but only just. There was never any sense that he was ever going to achieve his dream of owning a company and none of them seemed to actually do anything like work.  It’s such a pity as we both like Prabhas and were so disappointed in this lacklustre venture.

Kajal was lovely as Priya but seemed to fall for Vicky just a little too quickly. Initially she seemed to be a strong character with plenty of determination and confidence but lost her backbone when she fell in love. However her character was reasonably well developed and she delivered a good performance in her role. Taapsee’s character was less interesting and suffered from some very unfortunate choices in the wardrobe department. Prakash Raj and K. Vishwanath play their usual type of role as do many of the other uncles, aunts and family members and it’s nothing we haven’t seen many times before. And that really is the problem here – there is nothing new and the story isn’t interesting enough by itself. The comedy didn’t fit and in general just wasn’t funny. The fights were technically impressive but added nothing to the drama and didn’t serve to progress the story. It felt as though they were just added because they are more or less obligatory and people would want to see Prabhas in action.The songs were much better and mainly were well picturised although the placement was rather clumsy. We tried to look for good points but even the pictures on the walls and the furniture failed to inspire!  Less a Mr Perfect and more a Mr Ordinary.

Madrasapattinam

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I picked up Madrasapattinam with a little trepidation; after all Indian historical films featuring a cast heavy on English actors don’t usually bode well. But I was pleasantly surprised as, although there are tinges of Lagaan and a few cringe-worthy moments, overall Madrasapattinam fares somewhat better than expected. There is still the issue of almost uniformly ‘evil English’ and ‘good Indian’ characters, meaning most of the supporting cast are very one-dimensional. However the leads give good enough performances that apart from one notable exception, I could ignore the clichés and just enjoy how beautiful the film looks.

The film begins with the elderly Amy Wilkinson determined to return to India and find a man she last saw some 60 years previously. Ostensibly she wants to return a Thali necklace given to her as she feels it does not belong to her. As she is also quite seriously ill she travels with her increasingly whiney and irritatingly useless granddaughter Catherine who is supposed to be looking after her. To aid her search Amy has a photograph she took in 1945 but little else other than a name.

When they arrive in Chennai Amy starts to relive her time in India, when she was the young daughter of the Governor, and this is when the film really comes alive.  The young Amy is picked up at the station by the Commissioner of Police, Robert Ellis (Alexx O’Nell), and straight away he’s my biggest problem with this film. Why does every English bad guy have to be the most evil and despicable person on screen? It’s very obvious from the first time we meet him that this is a man with absolutely no redeeming features whatsoever and it’s difficult to keep watching and not just skip his scenes. In my opinion he could have been made much more interesting if he was just thoughtless and greedy rather than consistently evil, but sadly he’s just vile and repulsive and it’s very obvious from the very beginning how he is going to behave throughout the film.

On the trip to the Governor’s residence Amy meets Parithi (Arya) in classic ‘meet the hero’ style since she sees him running to save a donkey from the path of her runaway car. Parithi works as a dhobi and in his spare time he wrestles with local trainer Ayyakanu; a man with an impressive moustache who isn’t afraid to get down and dirty in the ring himself. Added to Partithi’s ability to run, wrestle and save animals is his most perfect feature – he can iron. Naturally Amy falls in love with her ‘brave man’ as he fights against the English plans to build a golf course on the area where the villagers work and live. It becomes a personal vendetta between evil Robert and Parithi as they are both also competing for Amy’s attention and since they are playing by different rules you know that it’s not going to end well.

Amy and Parithi meet each other in secret, and there are some lovely scenes as they struggle to overcome their language barrier. They have an ingenious if somewhat laborious method of communication, as Amy draws pictures on her clothes of where and when they will meet which Parithi then has to launder off. Amy spends much of her time in the village with her camera, and the villagers seem to love her just as much as she loves them. However when Indian Independence finally arrives it means the end of her romance unless she can escape with Parithi. Their plans are naturally foiled by evil Robert who chases them through the Independence celebrations determined that if he can’t marry Amy then no-one will.

The romance between Amy and Parithi is the best part of the film. Amy Jackson is stunningly beautiful and is convincing as a young English girl in the post-war period. She is nicely restrained in her scenes with Parithi, but charmingly natural with Parithi’s sister Selvi and the village children. Arya is excellent as the strong and mostly silent Parithi who is determined not to back down in the face of the English oppression.

There are many genuinely funny scenes which are well integrated into the narrative, and these help the film from getting too bogged down in all the drama of the fight for the village and the seemingly doomed romance. Tension is well build up in the chase scenes although these could have been cut a little without losing too much of the suspense. Cochin Hanifa as the translator Nambi and Nassar as Ayyakanu are the best of the supporting actors but the story revolves around Amy and Partithi and no-one else has an awful lot to do.

The film does look beautiful with well constructed sets which seem to be representative of 1940’s Madras, particularly to someone like me who’s only ever seen the modern version from 1990 onwards. There are one or two instances of rather dodgy CGI but these are fleeting and don’t really disrupt the story so they are ignorable. The end credits feature old pictures of Madras landmarks followed by their current appearance which really was fascinating. One anachronism for me was one of the actors had an apparent artificial eye. While this was possible from the time period, I don’t really think it’s all that likely that a dhobi would have had access to this especially post WWII where prosthesis were a luxury. But that’s just my obsession and I’ll just see how many people spot him.

The modern day scenes are somewhat hampered by an incredibly wooden performance from Lisa Lazarus as Amy’s granddaughter although Carole Trungmar is rather better as the elderly Amy and her periods of abstraction fit her character well. The story is compelling and the final scenes in the present day give a satisfying conclusion. While the soundtrack by G. V. Prakash Kumar is perfectly adequate it doesn’t stand out as particularly memorable. The first song is set in the dhobi village by the river and I’m sure intentionally, is very reminiscent of Ghanana Ghanana Ghir from Lagaan, although in this case they are asking the rain not to come. The rest of the songs have less dancing than I would have preferred but we do get the opportunity to see Arya in an outfit that looks as if he has just escaped from a totally different period film as consolation.

While evil Robert and the standard ‘English opression’ storyline did annoy me in this film, the romance is quite charming and I think the two leads manage to carry the story well. The parts of this film that I like, I really do like very much but the parts that I don’t like, I really do dislike very much. Which means a lot of fast forwarding when rewatching. As far as historical romances go it’s certainly not the worst I’ve seen and I give it 3 stars, although one of those is for a hero who can iron!

Temple says: I don’t have the same issue with evil Robert that Heather does. He shouts, snarls, twitches, bullies his underlings, has a pit full of decomposing bodies in his backyard and constructs overly elaborate revenge plans. In short, he’s like almost every other filmi villain. I do have an issue with the atrocious acting by the guy who plays Amy’s father. Distractingly bad. Given to long….pauses. For no reason. And delivered other lines. Like this. Staccato. Caroline Trungmar was not impressive as the older Amy as she seemed catatonic for most of the film but her Titanic inspired role was mostly to sit and look like she was remembering so I may be a bit harsh in my judgement. The tradition of really bad acting by white extras seems to be alive and well and was embraced by many in this cast.  As they were mostly caricatures rather than fully developed characters I don’t know that a more nuanced performance would have been much help. The Indian supporting cast were all pretty good, and Cochin Hanifa is lots of fun as are Parithi’s friends.

I was more distracted by the indeterminate historical period of the costumes and dialogues. As the film starts in 1945, the European costumes are often very wrong indeed and the dialogue sounds as though some of it was lifted from Dickens rather than a comparatively modern family. And the Europeans’ manners at the dance…well.

But the film is really about Parithi and Amy and if you can enjoy their developing love story, then it is a pleasant enough timepass. Arya is excellent as the strong silent type, prone to flexing and ironing. Who could ask for more? Ok well, if you want more, he also wrestles.  Amy Jackson looked more like a footballer’s girlfriend than a 1940s heroine but I think she is one of the least embarrassing gori love interests in an Indian historical film that I have seen. Their interactions are simple and often Amy follows Parithi about as he works, allowing us to observe the villagers life and see the diverse supporting characters in play. They have a nice rapport, and the scenes with Selvi (Parithi’s sister) are genuinely touching.

The look of old Madrasapattinam is very picturesque and the olden days scenes are pretty and dominated by sepia tones that help keep the mood of past times. The modern city of Chennai is a contrast in grey and blue, cold and confusing. This feels very much like a pastiche of Lagaan and Titanic with a dash of Kisna and it is entertaining rather than informative.

I give this 3 stars – for a good looking film, with good looking stars and a positive message that men who iron are heroes.