20th Anniversary Edition
So you all know what an FRS is right? Right?
+101: They actually made a film in 1999 where NT Sivaji Ganesan is credited before Superstar Rajnikanth, shows tremendous amount of love and respect; of course ignore the Rajnikanth gun barrel type opening before.
+1: No Narration, KSR makes it so simple. Kudos.
-23: Movie wants us to believe that this strange marriage tradition is only for traditional upkeep purposes and not anything about power. Because this one family basically controls…okay….
-31: Padayappa’s movie temple breaks all the rules of temple architecture, just so it can look grand; well that didn’t age well.
-21: Speaking of wells. We mean…ok so whenever there is a failed marriage, all the items are thrown along with the plates. Why can’t you keep the metal plates and throw the rest?
< Now That’s A Movie That We Would Like To See>
Years and years of failed marriages means there is a lot of plates that’s clogging the well; in a time of extreme drought villagers try to dismantle this age old tradition so that they can go back to using the well. Of course Sivaji family will oppose. That’s the conflict.
</ Now That’s A Movie That We Would Like To See>
+5: KSR cuts between Neelambari’s car and a snake. Thus.
We will see in sometime that this movies has more animal interventions than Zootopia
-6: villagers who first were afraid of snake and running away from it, suddenly become the task force employed to kill it. Because…reasons
+12: Hero is introduced by kissing a snake. Yes. Like. That.
-9.4: Hero fights away the task force before they could do anything to the snake, but still pulls the snake out of the ‘paampu putthu’ to kiss and smile at camera.
None of the pious villagers shouted “leave the snake alone”. Snakes are not going to like this film
-14: Neelambari falls in love with Padaiyappa. Just like that. Lady he just spoiled your plans.
Also Padaiyappa falls in love with Vasundhara immediately because she looks ‘pious’. Just.Like.That.
-34: Vansundhara is not a common ‘Velakaari’ name. Should we put this down under the ‘subverting audience expectations’ folder? Maybe we will, temporarily.
-5: Hero starting singing ‘singanadai pothu sigarathai eru’ for no reason. This was just a minor scuffle.
+5: Although he sings out of turn, Hero only talks about himself when asked “hey who are you man?” by Neelambari
-31.7: Village suddenly becomes festival atmosphere with all type of folk arts, even the ones from neighbouring states. Clearly some confusion in the geography of the place.
+13: Rajni’s face momentarily becomes a child and then tiger too. This could be a minus 13 too; it’s all how you look at it.
-30: Royal family (coughs) ..ahem..Rajni’s family want him to come and stay with them but do not want to call him also.
-8: Whenever Rajni plays the harmonica, the output also consists of background music, we mean the beats, the beats.
+11: Rajni doing dhadabahahabhaba comedy never ages
-11: The punch dialogues though
-101: Sivaji’s house is like palace(being pretty subtle in our descriptions here), so is Radha Ravi’s; but the rest of the village has not progressed much, they are still pouring milk to snake types- that itself should tell us a lot.
-34: Padayappa says that there are only 3 types of women in the world, thus making it generalize for the rest of the populace.
Movie does not follow its own classification and shows only two types: which is boring+homely and Hot+villie. No points for guessing that boring girl is what the hero will fall for.
The movies that this country makes, makes the lives of hot girls difficult. Maybe this movie started the dangerous trend of thinking that boring and homely means person is good.
Damn it we should be cutting more marks for this. But we are lenient. Also this movie is clearly about power. We simply cannot agree about the leeway given to Vasundhara just because she is hero’s type.
-282: Movie not only generalises women, it makes it easy for us to guess. If hero’s cousin brother is played by Vasu Vikram, then surely he will be a wastrel and a minor villain. This is like understood no?
+51: Damn good Manivannan is damn good in this movie and look at what he is given to work with! This movie only works because of the supporting characters, they make it work because all of them are the best.
Manivannan gets half a scene where he only rolls his eyes and moves from sentiment to serious to unscrupulousness before the great NT.
Lakshmi gets an entire monologue before everyone in this movie and that was probably done half awake. They are that good.
Radha Ravi with his face down and camera going round him is the best display of rage+shame.
Movies don’t work if the villain works (yes Neelambari is very good), that’s just a first order reading of film; it works if you either write great characters or cast the greats. KSR did the latter and did not make a joke out of his characters because his hero can have a clap. Traditional yet kudos.
Adding a 50 more, because this is what makes watching this dated movie rewarding for us.
#takeit
<Movie’s Essence Segment sponsored by sugar cane juice shops federation>
Movie basically happens because Lakshmi does the unexpected not once, not twice, but thrice
- Goes and blesses Nasser’s wedding even when her own daughter lost out
- Almost goes for re-registration of land but then backtracks in the last moment
- Promises to fix Padayappa’s marriage but then goes and shocks the entire village
</Movie’s Essence Segment sponsored by sugar cane juice shops federation>
-22: Even when his mother asks him to reduce fighting time, Padayappa fights for tooooo loooong. Most of the fights and chase scenes are uninspiring and all goons are useless. They should not be given any performance pay- no performance only.
-23.3: Movie wants us to believe that if you work as a mechanic in Chennai you can still save so much and buy considerable land and <wait for it> a full mountain in your home town. Just. Like. That.
-62: Hero becomes multi millionaire in one song cliche. Also movie overestimates the returns from granite quarries. Padayappa becomes like Ambani/Adani within the few minutes of screen time hard work he puts in. Was he a beneficiary of a suit boot ki sarkar? Nation didn’t want to know only.
But the movie is also about the rise and rise of Surya Prakash from a literal nobody to the home affairs minister, of course movie does not have time or balance to focus on the same.
+36: Neelambari and Surya Prakash are the seriously affected in the head siblings in an almost Hitchcockian way. But movie does not take it forward and is interested in other boring things like the love affairs of second generation Padayappans.
-6: Movie overestimates the fidelity of a VHS tape. 18 years is stretching it too much KSR
<Movie Timelines>
If the movie begins in 1999, then it forwards to 18 years later, but future looks nothing like 2017; KSR is quite bad in this futuristic mode. We mean… only in dreams Abbas a chocolate boy in 2017. Minus 49 in honor of blade runner sequel.
-12: Movie follows the idiom of whenever you dont know how to move the film, just let in the bull and since movie is toooo long we are tired only. Loool wait Prakash Raj is in this movie? LOOOL
And bulls are not going to like this movie.
+101 Movie invents #OoonjalDrop
-77: something, something and something happens and hero wins in the end. Yeah but what else?
-60: Hero says he will always take the alternate route (or the road less travelled) but picks a pretty traditional template route. We mean….never mind.
All numbers are incidental and arbitrary, except the facts provided by our data analytics team
Subam
Team FRS
If you would like to see a film marked against the FRS system do let us know in the comments below, who knows we might even consider it.
The Lowly Laureate 