ManMadhan Ambu - My Personal Opinion

For a beginning, don't go to the theaters expecting another Panchathantiram or Thenali. This movie is altogether different from those other KSR - Kamalahassan combo movies. This is somewhere in between Anbe Sivam and Panchathantiram. A movie with a message plus comedy. A feel good movie. Just sit back, relax and enjoy the cruise....

The Story

Ambu@Nisha (Trisha) is a popular actress and is engaged to Madhanagopal (R.Madhavan), a successful and rich businessman. A series of misunderstanding during the shooting for the "Oyyale" song with Suriya leads to a quarrel inside a brand new Hummer that Madhan bought specially for Ambu. And the quarreling lead to an accident with another car. Both of them were safe but no one knows what happened to the other car. The fight between the two ends as Ambu decided to take a break for holiday in France together with her childhood friend and divorcee Deepa (Sangeetha) and her two kids.

And now enters our universal hero Major R.Mannar (Kamalahassan) as a private detective sent by Madhan to spy on Ambu. As a return Madhan is to pay for the medical fees for Mannar's friend Rajan (Ramesh Aravind) who is suffering from cancer.
After a series of investigation, Mannar confirmed that Ambu is clean, loves only Madhan and is not flirting with any other guys. Madhan who is now a relieved man, backstabbed Mannar by refusing to pay the medical fees for Rajan since Mannar could not find any fault on Ambu.
Desperate to pay the bills for Rajan, Mannar decided to play a game by lying that Ambu is seeing a man.This made Madhan furious and ordered Mannar to continue the investigation and he promised to settle the bills.
How and where the lies leads form the crux of the movie.Will Madhan end up marrying Ambu? What was the significant of the car accident in the movie? Well, watch the movie to find out how the movie ends..

The Characters

As for the characters in the movie, all of them played the roles to perfection. Madhavan was simply superb and played the character to perfection.Suspicious and drunkard. A perfect casting for this movie. However, he did look like he gained a few kilos. Trisha spoke in her own voice for the first time and I do hope she will continue to do so in future. Acting along side with Kamal is no mean task and she managed to pull it off successfully.Sangeetha as a divorcee, money minded, a good friend and a mother was really good. A very special mention to Ramesh Aravind as the cancer patient. His acting was awesome! You can really feel the pain that he is going through in the movie.Oorvasi as Ramesh Aravind's wife acted in a serious role after some time. And not forgetting the kid who acted as Sangeetha's son, I believe he has a bright future and we might get to see him in a few more movies. Well, as you can see I did not comment on KamalaHassan's performance.err...do we need to comment on his performance?? Everyone knows how good he is and what can I say? Good to see that Kamal managed to reduce his weight and we can't see his belly anymore.hehehe..Kudos for Gauthami for his costumes selection. My personal favorite would be the black shirt and pants he wore during the stage show (the theme music). First time I saw someone wearing a Transitions lenses in a Tamil movie. :P     I'm wearing one, but I am not acting in any movies. LOL!

Whoever came up with the idea of showing the flashback scene in reverse mode in "Neela Vaanam" is brilliant. I assume it should have came from Kamal himself.Notice that Kamal will be singing normally but their action will be in reverse. Cool!

The Music and Background score

All the songs seems to be well placed and some songs runs in the background ("Who's the Hero" and "Manmadhan Ambu") so, feels like it does not distract the flow of the movie.The first song ("Boogolam"- was not in the Audio CD) during the beginning was nice and soothing to the ears. Background score was apt for the movie. I taught "Kamal Kavithai" was removed from the movie but strangely found it ways into the theaters. Perhaps it was removed only in India. "Neela Vaanam" is my all time favorite song from DSP so far. The lyrics of the song is awesome.  As for the music, Devi Sri Prasad (DSP), well done!

Summary

Overall, this is a movie about love, friendship,betrayal, the suffering of a cancer patient with a sprinkle of comedy. The movie takes it own sweet time to progress until the interval. It will be much faster during the second half and towards the ending it was really funny. This is a story based movie where each characters of the movie is well etched so there is no illogical scenes or unneccessary scenes in the movie except for two. One, the bullfight scene. I felt it was a bit silly. Maybe it was just me. Two, when Madhan confess his love during the climax, I felt it was a bit unbelievable. Maybe it was because he was drunk? I don't know. When Sangeetha confesses her love, it was a bit more belieable as she was more of a money oriented person and drunk.  What am I talking about?? hehe..go and watch the movie yourself.
NOTE :

1. Please do not compare this movie with Endhiran as both are in a different league altogether.

2. You will enjoy the movie if you dont set your expectation too high.

Verdict : A smooth cruise till you reach the destination! Madhavan, Sangeetha and the kid will definitely make you laugh!

Appalam - My Personal Opinion

For the first time ever, I was eagerly awaiting the time for me to watch a Malaysian made Tamil movie. In this case, I am referring to "APPALAM". No offense to all the other locally made Tamil movie that was shown in theaters, but this one was simply because it was about the relation of a father and his child. You guys will understand it once you become a father... :P.

The second reason was because of the director, Afdlin Shauki. The curiosity of how did a Malay man would direct a Tamil movie raised the bar for the movie (of course he also had the talented Shasi Tharan Rajoo as the assistant director.) Third reason was for the song from Dr.Burn - Appalam which is considered a hit in Malaysia and the forth reason was for the casting. Really wanted to see how all this local artist would perform on screen.

The Story

The movie begins with both Appalasamy(Ganaa) and Nalaini (Jaclyn) getting married in a temple just like any Tamil movie where the parents does not give consent for the marriage. The good part is, there was no flashback scene shown to tell you what happened. Its just that you know that is the case with Ganaa and Jacyln's expression.

Next, the famous song by Dr. Burn kicks in and in between the song, the story unfolds.

The story was set in 1992 in Penang and Appalasamy opens a stall that sells Indian food and his Appalam is very very tasty and huge.With the help of his friends, Wong (Iman Wan) and Hassan (Afdlin), they opened a restaurant in Penang. In a period of 10 years, Appalasamy became very successful as we can see their are now living in a huge bungalow and driving a Mercedes. How he became rich was not shown in detail as I think that was not necessary since that is not the core of the movie. However, they did show that he was opening a restaurant in Ipoh. So, could be that he has quite a few branches. Well, if we can accept Rajinikanth becoming rich by the end of a 5 minute song, this is totally acceptable!
Appalasamy was working very hard so that both his wife and daughter would be able to live a happy life until he does not have time to spend for his daughter and wife.This was deliberately shown in a few scenes where he could not attend the ear piercing ceremony and the dance competion of his 10 year old daughter.
The death of his wife due to an accident while quarrelling over the phone changed his life and he vowed be with his daughter so that he can protect and take care of her no matter what happens. Now, the story moves to another 7 years, and Appalasamy's daughter Shruti(Raja Ilya) achieves 10A1's and wanted to go to KL to furhter her studies and from here on you need to go to the theater near you to enjoy the movie! I do not want to go furhter from here as to not spoil the fun and drama in the movie.

The Characters

Appalasamy ~  Gana Pragasam

Shruthi ~ Raja Ilya

Nalaini ~ Jaclyn Victor

Siti ~ Sharifah Amani

Vassan ~ Vassantha Kumaran

Booty Slap ~ Shashi Tharan

Hassan ~ Afdlin Shauki

Wong ~ Iman Wan

Jasmine ~ Haanii Shivraj

Shasha ~ Kristina Vinokree

Mr. Prakash ~ Sathia

Teacher\Karate Master ~ Gunseh

Booty Slap’s Manager ~ Muthu Kumaran

Instead, I would like to write about the characters which were pillars of the movie. The performances of Ganaa and Raja Ilya is definately an award winning performance. This has to be Ganaa's best performance so far as we only used to see him in full fledged comedy movie but for this movie, emotion is very important and I believe Ganaa managed to deliver the needed performance. Kudos to Afdlin for choosing Ganaa to do the same character he enacted in Papadom.

Raja Ilya expression was good and seems to be correct at all places but for one thing which is the Tamil dialogue that she speaks (I assume that is her own voice) was not very clear. Not always but maybe just 3 or 4 times. And again, that is acceptable since Tamil is not her mother-tounge. Raja Ilya as a 17 years old was a perfect choice for the movie.
Sharifah Amani who came as the friend of Raja Ilya was very natural and funny too. Jaclyn Victor's performance was good but i think she might need to improve on her dialogue delivery as it seems forced at some places.Another actor that worth the mention is definitely Vassan. He was really good and manage to tickle your funny bones (the scene in the swimming pool was one of it.) Shashi Tharan as Booty Slap with his dialogue delivery and body language managed to give a different kind of  performance.
Overall the comedy in the movie is very original and does not copy any other movies (even Tamil movies) except for the Sathyah and Gunseh part. I will come to that later.The moment you see Afdlin Shauki, expect some unexpected comedy to roll in. This fellow is very good. Some of the scene are during the baby naming ceremony, when Ganaa is leaving  to KL to work as a gardener, the scene in the car after Shasha(Kristina Vinokree) threatened Ganaa and many more.

All the other supporting characters played their characters very well and was very natural. Congratulations to all the characters in the movie for living the character on screen!

Minus Points

Honestly speaking, I did not enjoy Sathya and GunSeh's acting very much. Their performance reminded me of Vadivelu (one of my colleague in office told me the same thing). They should have sticked to their original way of acting and if they did not try to imitate Vadivelu, it would have been better.
Another drawback of the movie is that none of the actors besides Sharifah Amani speaks the northen dialect despite all of them were born and raised in Penang. For me, since I was born and raised in Kedah, found it to be a bit akward. The director should have paid a little bit more attention on this.
The final dance scene of Shruti,hmmm...I'm not a professional dance or even a dancer to begin with but the dance could have been better choreographed (since, in the movie Shruti was said to be the best Bharatanayyam dancer in Penang). I think, the meaning of the song was not projected properly in the dance. Well, that's what I think...dunno bout others.

Conclusion

Overall, the movie was fully enjoyable and funny. Being a UPM graduate myself, it reminded me of those days when I saw the familiar locations of UPM. I just hope the movie will be a huge hit in Malaysia shown in other parts of the world as well.Make sure you watch in the theaters near you!

Verdict : Appalam; very crunchy and tasty!  Served with full set banana leaf meal. Enjoy!

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Enjoy the trailer and the songs below :

Appalam Trailer :

After All Valkai  :

Uchakattam :

Thaana Vanthe :




Vikna