AAHA KALYANAM – Minus the
‘Nadaswaram & Getti Melam’
Cast & Crew:- Nani as Shakthi, Vaani Kapoor as Shruthi, Badava
gopi as Hyder, M.J.Sriram, Simran
(Special appearance)
Director-A.Gokul Krishna, Producer-Aditya Chopra, Screenplay-Habib
Faizal, Story-Maneesh Sharma
Music-Dharan Kumar, D.O.P-Loganathan Srinivasan,
Edit-Bavan Sreekumar
Studio-Yash Raj Films
Language-Tamil/Telugu
Direction, story & Screenplay: -
Track list:- 1."Kadha
Kadha"-Chinmayi, 2."Honeyae Honeyae - Male"-Naresh Iyer, 3."Bon
Bon"-Haricharan, Sunidhi Chauhan, 4."Koottali Koottali" -Benny
Dayal,Usha Uthup, 5."Padhiye Padhiye - Female" Shakthisree Gopalan, 6."Mazhaiyin
Saaralil" (Thamarai)-Naresh Iyer, Swetha Mohan, 7."Aaha Kalyanam -
Instrumental" Instrumental, 8."The
Punch Song"-M. M. Manasi, Nivas
9."Padhiye Padhiye - Male"
Abhay Jodhpurkar, 10."Honeyae Honeyae” - Female"Supriya
Ramalingam.
The story, backdrop and setting (Screen
play), the premise is fairly simple
and straight forward and has been used and reused ‘hazaar bar’ in Indian
cinema. The only difference being the back drop - The boy and girl decide to
join in partnership to run a wedding planning business. Shakthi (Nani) is a college (a sort of drop out) in the sense he
stays in a college hostel but never attends classes (though all our college
student heroes do this all the time). Shruti
(Vani) a student of the same college (she & he feature in the songs but do
not meet). The heroine is career minded (wants to start a wedding planner co)
and the hero a street smart loafer. The heroine catches the hero and his
friends red handed as they gate crash a wedding. Initially sparks fly but in
the end both become good friends and finally end up becoming partners in a
wedding planning company. The company has humble beginnings and finally both
become the best in the business even surpassing their idol but later competitor
(Simran). From the very beginning they both decide that love and business
cannot coexist. Their friendship grows and remains platonic till the day they
end up tipsy and finally end up in bed. This is where the director decides he
has had enough with good story telling and screen play and somehow decides that
he should speed things up and goes helter skelter in trying to reach the
climax.
2nd half takes a bizarre turn as the hero and heroine go
berserk and decide not only to break their partnership, but also start abusing
each other, have cat fights, slander each other in public, and finally make
each other insolvent. Then out of the blue one rich Samaritan decides to play
God and both of them decide to unite once again to perform one last tango. To
add to this confusion the heroine is also engaged to the usual invisible N.R.I
(this is done to save the production house some money). Repeat scene from the
recent film ‘Endredrum Punnagai’.
The Climax:- Genre- ‘formula’.
Acting: - Nani as Shakthi, he has essayed his role well, though at times his body
language and dialogue delivery bordered on aping Rajini. His role was to appear
a local loafer but street smart which he portrays adequately. Somehow all the
Telugu imports have a striking similarity. Nani and actor Krishna (Kazhugu)
have a similar body language. His dance movements are adequate. He will
definitely be high on the ’Jollu’ star list of Tamil cinema for some time to
come. His chemistry with Vaani played well on the big screen.
Vaani Kapoor as Shruthi,
this girl is a bundle of energy. She matches the hero every step of the way
whether it is delivery of dialogue, dancing or romancing. She exhibits no
inhibitions in playing the role she has been specifically picked for. In fact
one somehow gets the feeling that she took the lead in the lip lock and love
making scenes. My gut feeling tells me that this lass will go places in Tamil
cinema provided she stays firmly grounded. The only problem being that her two biggest
assets, her acting prowess and her height may turn out to be her greatest road
blocks to an otherwise promising acting career.
Badava Gopi as Hyder, is
supposedly the flower decorator but honestly his role in the wedding planning
business was not very clear. He has essayed his role adequately, though in this
film his role has no great bearing to the main premise. He is referred to as
‘bhai’ so one gets to understand that he is a Muslim. I wonder as to why the
director goes to great lengths to emphasize this point by applying ‘Kajal’
around his eyes. I have not seen many Muslims settled in Chennai wearing Kajal
around their eyes all the time.
M.J.Sriram as the
‘dhaba’ owner cum wedding caterer has literally no role in this film. This
talented singer is yet to be used by any director to showcase his talent as an
actor. Here again the director gives a long ‘Karandi’ and asks him to say ‘ dei
koncham mundiri parruppu podu idhule” (or something to that effect). Believe me
this is his biggest dialogue in this film. Sheer waste of talent! In fact the
director has paid the least attention to this actor’s costume and his looks
thereby failing to authenticate his character in the film.
Special Appearance- Simran,
must be a dear
friend to the production house / the director or must have been in a benevolent
mood to have agreed to make a comeback of sorts with this miniscule guest
appearance.
The rest the heroine’s father and mother is
what every daughter would love to have but most likely remain a wishful dream.
The heroine’s ‘lil’ sister makes the shortest appearance and is never again
visible in this film. (If you were in the process of yawning/sneezing you would
probably miss her)
D.O.P.:- He should be complimented on the
most colorful camera work seen in Tamil cinema recent times. His lighting and
camera work did not stray from the main premise at hand - “ REMAKE”. He has
therefore not tried anything to ruin the main agenda and has stuck to his job
with due diligence and seldom strayed into experimentation mode. The last song
was well shot and is worth a mention.
Music: - There were so many songs in this
film. This film can straight away be termed as a ‘Musical Romance”. The songs
have a distinct North Indian flavor to it. There were no melodies, carnatic or
classical South Indian numbers in the entire track list. This was a big letdown
as far as I am concerned.
Art Director: - His job is well defined and cut out.
All the backdrops reeked of colours straight from a Hindi TV serial very often
featured in the channel ‘Colours’ and ‘Zee TV’. From time to time a few south
Indian costumes and rituals were on display but the backdrops were straight out
of a Bollywood film. The set properties and the backdrops in the office and the
wedding scenes matched well.
Edit: - The
one’s that worked: - 1) Vaani’s energy .2) Nani’s presence 3) the
flavor of colour, gaiety, fun and frolic throughout the film 4) Dialogues in parts 5) Clean portrayal of the lip lock and intimate love making
scene without hiding behind false sense of modesty 6) Song using punch dialogues.7)
No mushy (sic) love interludes 8) No
out of place love duets 9) No
Villains, adiyals, arivaals ,sticks and steel rods 10) No punch dialogues and rape scenes
The one’s I found
wanting 1) the Heroine revealing her business plans
to a total stranger.2) the frivolous
reasoning for the misunderstanding between the hero and heroine (Sessions
dialogue) 3) the hero and heroine
bitching about each other in public. (instead if one or both of them had spoken
highly of each other behind the other’s backs in spite of their
misunderstanding it would have helped bring them closer at the very end). 4) One liners to convince hero’s bad
delivery of Tamil dialogues 5) Being
in Sowcarpet and not a single usage of colloquial Hindi but speaking 'brahminical'
Tamil. 5) Mother Teresa portrayal of
the mother and Pope John portrayal of the father 6) Kajal to identify a Muslim and a French goatee for a small time
‘dhaba’ owner in Vanheusen attire.7) Insignificant
and ridiculous examples used to accentuate hero and heroine’s differences.
Finally to
sum it all up, a quote: “There's one thing to be said for a remake of a 2010
movie that uses the original's screenplay. This 2014 version is so similar —
sometimes song for song, line for line & word for word that I was wickedly
tempted to cut & paste the 2010 review available online. But that would be
wrong.”
Left right & Centre:
- Two gentlemen on my right a diploma holder & an IT professional - ’
Movie’s decent’
Two college girls:-
“Yeah! We saw the Hindi film; this is a fairly good remake of that. Actually
there is no difference between the original Hindi film and this Tamil remake.”
Outside in the car park
a businessman:- “Ok sir. But is it a dubbed film? The dialogues did not seem to
sync!”
Bottom Line: - IT’S FUN PLAYING HOLI,
RATHER THAN JUST WATCHING IT!
Until next time,
Director Haricharan
Chennai
21/02/2014
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