Vaaranam Aayiram
We are convinced Kollywood director Gautam Vasudev Menon must have really loathed his late father.
And Vaaranam Aayiram is Gautam Menon’s remorseless act of revenge on his old man for grievances, real or imagined.
How else can you explain this moron making an interminably long pathetic piece of shit a.k.a. Vaaranam Aayiram and then dedicating the nonsense to his dad.
There’s Forrest Gump and then there’s Cooum Dump oops Vaaranam Aayiram. (Just in case you are not from Tamil Nadu and happened to stumble upon this review, Cooum is that infamous stinking river in the state’s capital Chennai.)
Like director Robert Zemeckis in Forrest Gump, Gautam Menon sets off to tell the story of an ordinary man, actually two ordinary men here, father and son (both played by Surya) but unlike Zemeckis our Menon quickly falls flat on his face and just can’t get up for the rest of the movie.
Oh wait, lest he open himself to charges of stealing Forrest Gump outright, Menon’s thrown some new ingredients into the chamber-plot like bringing in the father angle and the so-called bond between father and son. All are given the amateurish treatment here unlike in that masterpiece Forrest Gump.
If you are the impatient, attention deficit disorder kind of guy demanding instant gratification, here’s a quick review summary of Vaaranam Aayiram - The story is less than gripping, Surya’s acting is so-so, the dialogs inanely banal, the songs soporifically dull and the dances, oh, they are straight from hell.
Bottomline: Boring shit. The audience at Movie City (Edison, NJ) didn’t seem too engrossed and there was constant chitchat and moving about in the hall.
And who do you think takes credit (should actually be discredit) for writing & directing this garbage – Gautam ‘inept’ Menon.
Given the shoddy story and screenplay of Vaaranam Aayiram, even Brando couldn’t have salvaged this trash.
As crude as Menon’s last film Pachaikili Muthucharam, Vaaranam Aayiram lacks the finesse that made Forrest Gump one of the classics of the movie business.
Vaaranam Aayiram begins with a very sick Krishnan (the father Surya) wheezing and panting laboriously and quickly kicking the bucket but not before vomiting the obligatory pint of blood (Menon, you think Tamil movie fans are such retards that they won’t be convinced someone’s really sick unless they see him puke blood on the bathroom floor?).
The news is quickly conveyed to the son Major Surya, who’s in an helicopter on a rescue mission.
The story is then narrated in flashback, going as far back as his father’s college days, and ends with the old man’s funeral but not before subjecting the audience to a sadistically tedious 2hr-45 minutes.
Surya the son is so-so except in some scenes where he completely fails to deliver the goods. For instance, when he’s in the hospital in the U.S. and when he’s in the phone booth talking to his parents, Surya is all at sea (a so-so Surya is infinitely better than our Ultimate non-Star Ajith). Surya is much better in the role of the father.
Also, the younger Surya’s descent into alcohol and drugs were crudely handled by Menon.
The train scene when the younger Surya first meets Sameera Reddy had some life and some interesting moments.
As long as she’s not required to say anything or move a step, that baby elephant Sameera Reddy is alright. Otherwise she bares her ugly fangs.
When Sameera Reddy tells Surya she’s in love with him, the dialog and scene had as much emotional intensity and feeling as a routine pass the ketchup request at the dinner table.
Simran and Divya Spandana didn’t do much damage.
Except for the Adiye Kolluthey song (ugly picturization though), music in Vaaranam Aayiram is forgettable.
Charging $15 for the Vaaranam Aayiram garbage is nothing short of robbery. To our previous characterization of Gautam Menon as a mediocre film-maker, we must now add the title of petty-thief.
If you have any respect for your hard-earned money, stay away from this plague called Vaaranam Aayiram. Life’s too short to be wasted on such crap.
P.S: Will Anil Ambani fix the disgrace of Phoenix Adlabs Movie City theatre in Edison (NJ). Those duffers at the theatre can’t run a movie without messing it up. They did it twice in Vaaranam Aayiram (the frames keep getting split up on the screen).
