Two Line Reviews - #454

Movie: Maattrraan (Thamizh, 2012)

Plot: The lives of a rich and happy conjoint twins duo get completely disrupted ending in the death of one when a group probes on the successful heath-drink product the twins' father's company makes. The other twin, with clues from what his brother had gathered, sets on a trip to a country of the erstwhile USSR and finds answers to the mystery shrouding the product - answers of the order he would not even have dreamt of!

What Works?

• The film has a tidy plot and the narrative doesn't reveal all the stuff in one go giving rise to a well-paced screenplay. K.V. Anand needs to be commended for this nice treatment which makes one feel like reading a solid thriller novel.
• Suriya hasn't had the scope for a strenuous performance but brings life to the bromance and one feels the impact when one of them dies. The energetic twin's antics are spontaneous and is a winner! Kajal Aggarwal is a definite eye-candy in songs!
• The technical team (comprising the men behind the lens, scissors & VFX) has done a pretty good job and efforts of the experimental digital head replacement and other VFX techniques are to be seen as things don't seem ugly when the twins are shown to fight,dance, talk and move together.
• Anand's signs of his future success as a commercial director are all there in the finely positioned comic one-liners and the visuals of the Rettai Kadhire title song.
• Harris's songs are foot-tapping but the flow-bothering Kaal Mulaitha Poove could have been avoided.

What Doesn't?
The film's climax where the father gets minutes to justify his act & the stretch the film takes to try in not giving a rough treatment to the age-old 'father-son sentiment' brings yawn near the finish-line.

Decent effort, nice treatment; Deserved a better run than what it got!

Harris has Ennamo Edho!

I have watched the song trailer of ‘Ko’ in atleast five screens thanks to the weighty marketing measures that the producers Red Giant pictures have taken. With just a glimpse of the song that gets played in the trailer, one could make out that it is a HIT material. Now that the album has been released , the notion gets confirmed. But what intrigues me is “How many times has he been successful with just a single tune!!”.

The song that I’m talking about is ‘Ennamo Edho’ from Ko. If you haven’t listened to it yet, no worries; it sounds so similar to ‘Hasili fisili’ of Aadhavan. Coming to think of the source of inspiration for this particular signature tune of Harris, I have to go back to atleast the ‘12B’ days. So, ‘12B days’ (Dasavatharam Kamal narration style!). In the film ‘12B’ there is this song ‘Sariya Thavaraa’ & in this song, there is this verse ‘Saa pa ma ga, sa sa pa ma ga ma pa ga ri sa; ma pa ma ga ri sa’. The swarams seem to have reached Harris’s subconscience as you can identify it in many of his songs. The startling fact is that all the songs that have this tune have turned out to be raging blockbuster hits. Be it Unnale Unnale’s ‘June Ponal’, Vaaranam Ayiram’s ‘Adiye Kolludhe’, Ayan’s ‘Neeyum neeyum adi needhana’, Aadhavan’s ‘Hasili Fisile’, Engeyum Kaadhal’s ‘Lolita’, Vettaiyadu Vilayadu's 'Paartha mudhal naale',Saamy’s ‘Hayaiyo’ and a hell of a lot of other songs. The latest to join the bandwagon is Ko’s ‘Ennamo Edho’ which is sure to follow the rest in the list of big hit songs of Harris.

I am not demeaning Harris for being so monotonous for two reasons:

• I am a fan of all these songs despite me & have listened to them quite a lot of times.
• His music is not just about that; He keeps giving songs like Dhaam Dhoom’s ‘Aazhiyile’, Vaaranam Aayiram’s ‘Anal mele’ which are highly genial melodies.

As long as he keeps churning out hits with these ‘Sa pa ma ga’ tunes , no complaints; One has to agree that the Harris guy has an ennamo edho magic to overcome his restricted repertoire!