Over the past couple of years, we have seen many of our Malayali actors making their presence felt in major projects across the nation as in Hindi, Tamil & Telugu. One of the prominent among them is Prithvi who has collaborated with many not just as an artist but also through his production house. Incidentally, I felt that two major releases in Tamil & Hindi over the past fortnight or so, had his presence albeit in different manners. These included Venky Atluri's "Vaathi" & Raj Mehta's "Selfiee" and it was interesting to see as to how they fared at the box office.
Vaathi: "Audience deserves the right to better movies from Dhanush!!!"
The right to education across all strata of society & the efforts to prevent commercialization of education that would be detrimental to students is a topic that has been discussed numerous times in the past. One such movie that instantly comes to mind is the Prithvi starrer "Manikyakallu", not to forget other impactful movies like Kamal Hasan's "Nammavar". Well Venky has taken the same path whereby the protagonist tries to thwart the efforts of the private institutions to deny facilities to government students.
The film unfolds with a group of students stumbling across a video cassette collection of one of their grandfathers which happened to be mathematic lectures. They decide to track down the lecturer in the hope of seeking tuitions from him & their search eventually leads them to the district collector who happened to be his student. Apparently, the lecturer was Bala (Dhanush), a junior teacher who belonged to the Thirupathi Group of Institutions which was managed by Thirupathi (Samuthirakani). As part of his boss's scheme, Bala along with many others were nominated as full time teachers to government schools on a contract basis. Soon enough Bala brings about a positive change to the institution that he was appointed to which ruffles many feathers especially that of his boss.
Well the audience is obviously aware that it is a mass movie & the formula that is required for such flicks is applied. However, at the same time our search for novelty takes a back seat as it fails to endear to the audience except in some of the emotional sequences. The story is predictable & culminates in a rather tame climax with no impact at all with regard to the core subject. In that sense, I certainly felt Prithvi's movie felt ore endearing unlike this version. The technical aspects were average except for GV Prakash's music.
None of the characters were etched properly especially Samuthirakani's character which was pretty bland & didnt provide anything out of the ordinary. Dhanush has done a decent job in a role that barely challenged him while Samyukta was ok though it was surprising that she was absent in many of the significant scenes. Kudos to many of the child artists who performed admirably.
Verdict: Whenever a Dhanush movie hit the screens, there is always a certain degree of expectations which unfortunately remained unfulfilled in this. It is just a rehash of many of the sequences that we have seen in similar themed flicks.
Rating: 2/5
Selfiee: "Akshay's wait for a blockbuster remains elusive!!!"
Prithvi's latest presence in Bollywood marked the entry of his production company in collaboration with Dharma Productions for the remake of his superhit flick "Driving License". The project was helmed by Raj Mehta who made his debut with "Good Newwz" that had Akki in the lead & collaborated with Rishabh Sharma for the story to ensure that the essence of Sachy's script was maintained while tweaking it adequately so as to cater to the sensibilities of the North Indian audience.
The plot as most of you are already aware is basically the face off between a superstar & his ardent fan when a rather pleasant rendezvous transforms into a full blown ego clash due to misunderstanding. The people in question were superstar Vijay Kumar (Akki) & RTO Inspector Om Prakash (Emraan Hashmi), with the latter being approached by Vijay's political acquaintance to procure a driving license as the original was apparently lost. It was a matter of who would eat humble pie which neither of them were keen to do so.
In terms of the screenplay, Rishabh has incorporated a couple of changes to the characters which kind of hampered the effect that was expected. Irrespective of how superstars might be in real life, Vijay certainly needed to be one that had an air of arrogance about him which was toned down significantly. It felt like the makers were worried that it would show Akki in poor light & essentially seemed as if it was to polish his brand value. Another blunder that was made was in the characterization of the producer & the rival star performed aptly by Lalu Alex & Suresh Krishna. Over here, both the characters were made into buffoons especially the latter for reasons best known to them. All of these factors are the reasons why the original felt more relatable & the face off between Prithvi & Suraj had more bite.
On the technical side, it was fine while on the performance front, both Akki & Emraan has done their parts aptly. Both Diana Penty & Meghna Malik has done justice to their roles which were better etched than Deepti Sati & Saiju Kurup respectively. As for the rest, Abhimanyu Singh was cringy while Nusshratt Bharuccha (as Emraan's wife) was ok.
Verdict: It is certainly not a poor remake but having watched the original, I certainly felt that it suffered from a much diluted screenplay & mediocre characterization. In short, you may give it a try!!!
Rating: 2/5
Regards...Ben
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