Tag: siva karthikeyan

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cinema FRS

FRS: Seema Raja

So we all know what an FRS is right? Right? Let’s get on with it because this movie took seven hours to end.

 

seemaraja1

-300: The one millionth time when we see molten metal falling into the mould to create the movie title.

Here it comes with heraldry also. #MadeOfSteel types

 

-101: Some minor irritation happens and someone in the crowd shouts: “indha aniyayatha thatti ketka aale illaya?” and cue to SK introduction.

Yes this has been happening from Bhagavater times.

 

+12: SK has two horses named Alex and Telex #goodnames

SK also names his pigeons after Tom Cruise, Arnold, Obama etc

 

-10: Just when we thought director Ponram had done away with narration and ushered in a new age in commercial filmmaking, there is narration.

Damn narration.

 

FRS Mini Bytes

 

All narration about (insert regional language here) history is ultimately a glorified version of the (insert regional language here) past.

 

+21: SK breaks a wooden fence during introduction, uses pieces of the broken fence to continue action. We appreciate this reduce and reuse approach.

 

FRS Mini Bytes

98% of movies about villages will be about how one village is not able to get along with nearby village. Here it is Singampatty vs Puliampatti

 

+32: SK,Rajah of Singampatti is able to attract an audience of 11,000 people for his facebook live.

This is in a time when even Sunny Leone was able to get only just above 6K in a recent live stream. We will not speak about how we know about this Sunny Leone fact, matter ends there.

 

+101: Self referential movie is totally self referential

SK acknowledges this very fact in the opening song, when the oeuvre of director of Ponram is compared to “aracha maava araipoma” but even a talent is required for that.

Seema Raaja is essentially the SK-Soori combination and a lot of girl chasing thrown along the way; as usual getting the girl is the goal of the hero

 

-101: Even if hero is the rajah of Singampatti, goal of hero is: get the girl.

Here it is Samantha going under the name Sudhandhira Selvi (Daughter of Freedom?)

-54: Heroine says no means no, but hero tells story of phoenix bird which attempts to reach the sun at every possible attempt even after burning; heroine is amused and ultimately gives in to these ‘charms’. #ModernLove

-341: As usual, hero sings song in praise of farmers and how they never seek to gain profits

But never pauses to ask question what film producers seek to gain from such unabashedly profit making films.

-100: Ex-Lady Superstar Simran plays the baddie in this semi-rural film which means that audience need to understand that shouting will be a major character trait.

-29.8: At some point that movie becomes so boring that usually enthusiastic FRS writers themselves have stopped coming up with random FRS points and started to browse their mobile.

It was at this time that they could have seen the Sunny Leone instagram live stream, although we won’t talk about this anymore.

-54: That no one on-set had the courage to tell what Soori was doing is not funny.

-890.3: Movie suddenly tries to become Baahubali with an absolute force-fit for the ages with a story about Kadambavel Raja(also SK) who protected his land from invaders.

Since the present day story-line was not going anywhere, the story of Kadambavel Raja is echoed and Seema Raja also protects the land of his people etc from crony capitalists and middlemen etc

I mean… was this not boring while writing itself?

 

Seema Raja pushes the boundaries of boredom to such an extent that boredom is transformed into an irrepressible irritation, only very few movies are possible of doing such things. That itself is an achievement.

 

Also since most things are force fitted in the film, you can at least listen to what we have to say about pride and history in general.

 

If our pride should come from past glories, then we are failing in the present and will surely fall in the future as well.

 

Well, that is a depressing statement to finish an FRS with, so we will add some 20 marks for a CGI generated leopard which is there for laughs in this movie.

 

Regards

Team FRS

Vanakkam

Categories
cinema cinema:tamil

RUNNING ON LOOP

Edhir Neechal

Edhir neechal, featuring comedian Siva Karthikeyan in the lead is a partly a sports film.  Hmm, generally I abhor sports films not because they are not entertaining but they usually follow the same story arc which is as follows: the underdog, the had been coach, the impossible opponent, the words of wisdom and inspiration, the fall before the rise, the final battle with the underdog emerging victorious.

Edhir neechal has all of the above, but begins differently, with a fundamental woe which has nothing to do with sport, the name. The protagonist, who is named after the family deity and when that name is shortened is cause for much embarrassment. Interestingly the major events in his life run around his inability to decide on whether to go for a name change. The first part of the film is a plain buddy comedy, where the buddy here is played by Satish and is quite good. My only problem with the buddy comedy is that, these buddies solely exist to absorb the botherings of the protagonist and have no life of their own, even if they do they don’t seem to care about it. Yes, it is the same rectilinear approach of story telling from the point of the hero. The sole purpose of this buddy is to help the hero win his girl, the usual animated socially aware multitasking sweet school teacher Priya Anand, the template itself will make any hero fall in love.

Suddenly what happens is this, the story wakes up. Having been put to sleep with endless duets and love failure numbers, the hero decides that in his life he must have conviction. I’m sure that the previously mentioned story format is very extend able to any sport and in R.S Durai Senthilkumar’s film it is a marathon. Admirable to see that effort has been undergone to introduce what a marathon is to the audience and also commendable is the use of newspaper events that everyone is familiar with to propel the story. Actually my only problem with the film is that it is not a film, but two. The earlier portions having no correlation as to how it all ends, and the marathon portion is a film by itself having two involved back stories and i think that’s the story the director would have wanted to make and with the available time he does manage it convincingly, the first part is just to get you to your seats.

Also seems that no one can make a successful film without a bar song.

I’ve come to realise (yes very late) that these sports films are done to inspire audience, to help them achieve what they thought yesterday as impossible; in the end it is about selling hope.  I liked the film honestly and I’m not going to complain about people sticking to formats because that’s what they intended to do.

But then I’ll keep saying it’s the same thing, again and again.