Imagine Thambi Ramaiah as one of those six-foot tall, muscled, aspiring actors who throng Kollywood. Imagine this hybrid person as the male lead of an insipid comedy.
And imagine Manobala as the villain of the piece.
If you succeeded in imagining all these things..then well,
…your name is director Inbasekhar. And the film you just imagined, is Adhagapattadhu Magajanangale.
A done-to-death comedy of errors about an idiot who loses his guitar, this film has music by D Imman and cinematography by PK Varma. Both do their job and do it well.
The rest (including editor AL Ramesh) sleep walk through their assigned roles.
*****
Thambi Ramaiah’s cohorts fill up this film. There’s Manobala, whose mere presence seems to inspire the writers to come up with a series of homophobic gags. There’s Pandiarajan and his bloodshot eyes, wasting away his time on a role that requires him to compare an old guitar to his father’s soul.
If this level of ludicrousness is not enough, there’s also Karunakaran, as the sidekick/punching bag. A walking-talking gag put in place to deflect the audience from lead Umapathy’s lack of acting skills.
Meanwhile, D Imman continues his fine work of churning out the kind of music we’ve heard in his films before. It’s like that man who goes into a hotel for idly and sambar everyday. He knows what to expect. And it’s damn fine, idly sambar anyway.
Along the way, Umapathy also manages to fall in love with the daughter of a rich construction company owner. She knows karate and can drop kick a 200 pound man in no time.
But, but but, she is also the type to slip on a carpet (that has clearly been in her family for centuries, considering the amount of dirt on it) and fall quite conveniently into the hands of the hero.
How do you explain such scenes? How do you explain such a film?
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How does this nonsense even get made?
And, how, tell me, how exactly, does one sit through a Sathyam matinee show of this film, with Umapathy’s adoring, indulgent family and friends, who make no bones about their love for this genre of mind-numbing cinema?
This film got a standing ovation at the theatre I was in.
If this is a sign of the times to come, then…
God Bless Tamil Cinema.
*****
The Adhagapattadhu Magajanangale review is a Silverscreen original article. It was not paid for or commissioned by anyone associated with the movie. Silverscreen.in and its writers do not have any commercial relationship with movies that are reviewed on the site.