Drenched in mediocre results with previous films ‘Sathyam’ and ‘Thoranai’, Vishal plays it safe this time with a different genre. ‘Theeradha Vilayattu Pillai’ exhibits down with a breezy romantic storyline, but again has lots of prototyped commercial elements that prevailed in his previous flicks.
Moreover, the screenplay just seems to be similar with reality shows that have dramas of ‘Elimination’, ‘Surprises’ and ‘unwanted special guests’ during the course of film’s protagonist pinning down on girl of his choice.
The film is about happy-go-lucky Karthik (Vishal) on the pursuit of best things in his life. Be the Reynolds pen or the girl he marries, if wants everything to be perfect. Karthik embarks on a completely perplexing journey of developing an affair with three different girls at the same time.
Priya (Sarah Jane) strongly believes falling in love with a person and marrying him while Tejaswani (Neethu Chandra), a top-class millionaire having a bitter experience in love and Jyothi (Tanushree Dutta), an athlete with a disregard for guys.
As Karthik starts flirting around with these gals, he is completely unaware about its consequences, which pits him into deep troubles more than he bargained for.
Vishal makes an effortless performance. But it’s quite interesting to watch him stepping out of stereotyped characterization. Naturally, the frontbenchers are sure to identify themselves with the role of Karthik. Neethu Chandra gets meaty role on different dimensions as she shares more screen space with Vishal. Sarah Jane enchants us with her cherubic looks and scores brownie points with her decorous show. Tanushree Dutta gets a substantial intro, but looses out her very characteristic nature due to filmmaker’s amateur treatment of establishing scenes. Prakash Raj sleepwalks through his role and doesn’t appear more than 3 sequences. Santhanam, Sathyan and Mayilsamy offer us delightful ingredients with witty one-liners. Some of their hilarious quotients keep the first half more spanking.
Debutant Thiru has picked a zippy script well-tailored for youth cohorts, but his screenplay is too predictable right from the beginning till end. Obviously, if you’re quite intelligent, you would guess the girl joining hands with Karthik at last. As mentioned earlier, the way Karthik eliminating each girl when they find out his cloak-and-dagger intentions is so tedious.
Musical score by Yuvan Shankar doesn’t contribute much to the film’s narration. Except ‘En Jannal Vandha’ none of them sounds interesting. Nonetheless, Vishal seems to have focused a lot over technical arenas – costumes and locations particularly.
Aravind Krishna’s cinematography is fantastic as he keeps playing with innovative placements of angles pertaining to psychological aspects of situations. Editing is okay and choreography by Bosco and Ceaser for ‘Theeradha Vilayattu Pillai’ is tremendous.
On whole, ‘Theeradha Vilayattu Pillai’ has convincing elements specially catering for B and C centres. With Sun Pictures handling it all with vigorous promotions, the film may get on for favorable results till next weekend with accordance to other releases.
What works: Vishal, Sarah Jane, Neetu Chandra, Comedy, cinematography…
What doesn’t work: Tanushree Dutta, slow-paced screenplay in second half, predictable moments, unwanted cameo of Sneha, Music….
Verdict: Watch it once…
