Tamil Movie Review - "Villu" - watch at your own risk!

Friday night was, unfortunately for me, nostalgia night. I wanted to hear someone speak my mother tongue, Tamil, so I succumbed to the nostalgia and dragged my unwilling husband to see the new Pongal release Tamil movie called "Villu". I went because of the the famous names associated with it - actor Vijay and actress Nayantara playing the lead roles and actor Prabhu Deva foraying into Direction for this movie.

I want to give you some positive feedback and so I have racked my brains all night. Ah! I got it! I heard people speak in Tamil! And at the end of the movie, my husband and I (when we finally figured out the story line) got to spend another hour discussing how the movie should have actually ended: with the sandstorm revealing Vijay's father's body, buried all those years ago, and Vijay finally cremating his father's body with honor. My husband was of the opinion that it too, would have been incorporated, had the Producers not run out of money! :)

The movie was splice of nearly every imaginable scene ever played in a Tamil movie and some of the horrific atrocities committed on women in most Indian movies.

MGR's old films were spliced in and copied; there were animated cows dancing, kicking and spewing turd on the very boring Vadivelu (I would like to meet the person who still thinks he is a comedian!); animated beehives falling, with animated bees stinging real people; German men who believed that African Chimpazees can look and speak like humans and who gyrated badly to Tamil movie songs; fat women bathing; a blue ray disc that was a blue CD stored in some blue room accessed via a blue corridor; thugs who wanted to abduct a girl on her wedding day; army officers who suddenly became rich thugs and lived in Germany...

Add to all that, the lead female role played by Nayantara was some kind of nightmare. It appeared that Nayantara had been directed to display all the navarasas (nine emotions - love, hate, disgust, cruelty, kindness, courage, wonder, sorrow and fear) in 9 seconds. Her face contorted every ninth second, making the scenes she was in, a blur.

Vijay, who played the lead male role, did what he is usually good at - danced around, acted tough, and looked good. It appeared that in one of the dances, Prabhu Deva (the dancing maestro, who has unfortunately strayed from his real talent as a dancer and actor) has danced and superimposed Vijay's face. It made for weird scenes of a body juxtaposed horribly with the face. In addition, the dance steps were repetitive. When the step was performed for the first time it was cool. The second time it hit me on the head. The third time, it drove a nail through my heart. Enough!

Prabhu Deva is a much better actor and dancer than he is a director. I implore him to switch back to his original career. I used to love his acting and really enjoyed his dancing.

The film was disjointed and muddled. The comedy made me want to cry. The editing was choppy. The story line was tired. It was the longest 3 hours of my life. I wanted to walk away 10 minutes into the movie, but by then, my husband was in the mood for being a sleuth so we stayed in order to see if we could eventually discover the existence of a story line. To Director Prabhu Deva's credit, we finally got the story (I think!) by the time the curtains came down 3 hours later.

I guess I could have reviewed this movie with one sentence: if you plan to spend $8 on this movie, don't!

Buy a burger instead, and call me if you want to hear spoken Tamil!