Ivanukku Thannila Gandam Review: A Very Tamil Hangover

A lot of comedy in Tamil cinema is spawned by drunken revelry. Loud drunken brawls that turns ‘comic’, with double entendres and puerile jokes thrown in for kicks. But, Ivanukku Thannila Gandam goes beyond such mundane trivialities.

It does everything. With a fair share of racist, sexist, sophomoric humour. And, a Gaana Bala number.

Probably inspired by The Hangover – with situations that arise from a hazy, drunken night, Ivanukku… takes unsavoury digs at almost everyone. There’s the lanky (and fair) Hindi-speaking anchor whom the hero – righteous Dravidian blood coursing through his veins – detests, a runaway bride, some sweeping generalizations about women, and a lot of racial discrimination exclusive to Tamil movies. Fairness – as VIP and a host of other movies have been advocating – is quite unbecoming, especially in a man – so the villain is just as fair as the heroine (a ‘vellai nethili’ she is called) and speaks some heavily accented English. Naturally, women swoon over him and his polished ways, while the hero – who anchors a nightly show with a sexologist (Manobala in yet another sleazy role after Kaaki Sattai) – feels woefully neglected.

Then, there’s an insipid chase, mindlessly constructed and executed – some really ‘offbeat’ humour; slights on physical appearance, more inane generalizations and discrimination, crudely shot sequences bordering on soft porn – and just about everything meant to ‘entertain’. Hearty sniggers and all.

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The Ivanukku Thannila Gandam 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 an advertising relationship with movies that are reviewed on the site.

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