Balaji's Thots

Director Ezhil started off working with stars like Vijay and Ajith but had a long break in his career after 2007’s Deepavali. He returned in 2012 with Manam Kothi Paravai and has since found success on a smaller scale with rural comedies headlined by actors with much less star wattage. I was not a fan of Manam Kothi Paravai or his next couple of movies but liked his last film Velainu Vandhutta Vellaikkaaran which had some very funny moments. But with his latest film Saravanan Irukka Bayamaen he again takes several steps backward.

After Saravanan(Udhayanidhi Stalin), his uncle Kalyanam(Soori) and a politician Veerasingam(Mansoor Ali Khan) get their photographs taken by a drunkard photographer for different reasons, the photographer has three similar covers on his table with warnings about not getting them mixed up. We know right then that he is going to get the photographs mixed up and that’s exactly how it plays out . That’s just the start of the story but that is how painfully obvious the comedy in Saravanan Irukka Bayamaen is throughout.

After the mix-up, Saravanan ends up as the local head of a national political party while Kalyanam, who is forced to run away to Dubai and Veerasingam, who gets into trouble with his wife’s family, end up with grudges against Saravanan. Thenmozhi(Regina Cassandra), who moved away when she was younger, also returns and is soon added to the list of people who want revenge against Saravanan. But the way she goes about doing it, like agreeing to wed Veerasingam’s son(Chaams), an obvious idiot, doesn’t show her in a good light.

Ezhil’s policy in the film is to add characters for all comedians he can round up and make the story so complicated that we stop trying to make sense of it. But without a funny script, there’s not much all these comedians can do and actors like Yogi Babu, Chaams, Madhan Bob and Manobala are left floundering with barely a few scenes in which to make an impact.  And when the story doesn’t allow for any more characters, we get sequences – like an anthakshari at a panchayat – that feature even more comedians(like Robot Shankar) but are still unfunny and go on forever.

The only surprise in the film is the sudden turn into the supernatural as a ghostly hand snakes out of a well grabs a flower Saravanan places on the wall. Thankfully this does not turn the film into another horror-comedy. This ghost(the flashback featuring Srushti Dange is really short and abrupt) is a friendly one and out to help Saravanan. But the ways in which it helps him are simplistic and unimaginative, leading to easy solutions to some potentially interesting problems(like stopping Thenmozhi’s marriage).