I know what you are thinking. Why? I’ve been asking myself this question ever since I decided to watch the movie. But I still went with it. After all, how will my trip to India be complete without watching a shitty movie in theater, right? And boy did I choose the perfect movie for that. Bairavaa was beyond repairable. How are we supposed to take it seriously after Vijay is compared with Sachin, Dhoni, Ricky ponting and the likes 5 minutes into it? Am I supposed to believe that everyone had a straight face while writing and filming scenes like these?
My only theory is that they were planning to make an innovative comedy like A. Kumar and promote it as an action packed entertainer. There is absolutely no reason for making something like this. I was laughing my ass off for most of the scenes, except the ones that were supposed to be comedy. I’m writing this just an hour after watching the film but I’m still referring wikipedia to remember the plot. It takes special talent to make such a forgettable film that has literally nothing worth taking away. Even complaining about cliched formulaic films have become cliched now but the films are still coming out. I can’t even write a sentence describing the plot (which can actually be said in a single line), without sounding boring.
Where should I even begin to talk about this ~3 hours of crap-fest? And yes, they actually managed to stretch this lousy one line to 3 goddamn hours. Probably the longest and most boring 3 hours of my life. Initially they try to lure us in with Sathish’s “witty” comebacks and Vijay’s “charismatic” screen presence and “emotional” message dialogues. Just when we decide to take a short nap, the heroine gets introduced. So we wake up again to check if something might happen and it is at this critical moment when the hero decides to ask the quintessential question of “Who are you?” to her. Thinking that this is probably her only time to shine in this chauvinistic movie, she starts her flashback with “Long long ago, so long ago, nobody can say how long ago…” that goes on for another decade. We finally wake up from our hypersleep when the theme music plays for the gazillionth time with Vijay walking into the screen in slow motion, seducing the audience with his flirtatious eyes while his flamboyant hair taking up whatever attention we have left. Truly a masterpiece.
I get that movies don’t have to satisfy everyone. But if this is the kind of movie that satisfies a specific kind of audience, I truly feel bad for the people in this industry who are forced to work in scripts like this. We could actually hear santhosh narayanan cringe in his background score. He has tried to stay close to his heart at times but this was way out of his hands. I wonder how many more technicians were forced to work in this for their daily bread and butter. There were so many recognizable faces on screen, and yet not a single memorable scene or a dialogue.
What saddens me is that this movie will still make profit and people like Barathan will continue making non-movies like these. Opinions like these on commercial films aren’t even considered worthy to note just by labeling the movie as “masala”. It breaks my heart when I read stuff like “Vijay fans will like this”. I know I am going beyond control with write-up but my frustration and disappointment makes me want to write even more.
Nobody is going to follow my words to watch or not watch a film. I am no one to judge someone based on their likes and dislikes on movies. And I’m not here to talk people into changing their opinion about something. If this is what people want to make and watch, by all means do it. If you want to make people cheer for their hero murdering people on screen, go ahead. But try to rope in manjima mohan or parvathy next time so that people like me will at least have something to look out for on screen?
