I decided to start my summer vacation by watching Theri and I blame myself for this decision. Having access to so many awesome stuff through Netflix and HBO GO, I decided to watch this in a stupid cam print (Go ahead. Judge me.). Not watching the movie in a proper theater with a proper audience might have caused me to have a negative opinion about the film but I don’t think the theater experience would have made any impact in my opinion for this excuse of a writing. Apart from the obvious “vijay fans” jerkfest and the “typical commercial masala drama family audience children’s women friendly genre”, I will try to explain what else that did not work out for me in the film. If you are a fan of anyone related to this film and if you have come this far in this review, I would urge you to stop and read some paid reviews like behindwoods or indiaglitz or watch the other annoyance in the name of video reviews. Continue at your own cost.
When you have decided to write a story that has already been beaten to death a gazillion times, the least you can do make an effort to make it entertaining. What boggles me is that this story was approved by a group of people, a set of actors actually decided to play these roles, people agreed to produce this film (altough they might have had other reasons to believe that they might gain profit) and so many technicians accepted to work in this film and not one of all these thousands of people said that this was a bad idea. I might sound overtly pretentious but the movie was genuinely bad. When are these people ever going to stop milking all these easy profits out of these heroes and try to make films that actually matter using their fame? When are they going to stop pleasing their fans alone and look at the wider audience?
And what is up with Atlee and making people on screen cry for every other scene? I might be dead inside but I do cry watching so many films. Theri has so many scenes which is supposed to bring sad or happy tears to the viewer but I didn’t feel any emotion watching any of those scenes. Even the melodramatic music didn’t help. There was this one particular scene where Vijay tries to convince Samantha’s father for their marriage. He just sprouts out random words without any emotions that I’m sure wouldn’t make a single soul in this universe to emote anything but the other two people on the scene decided to cry for absolutely no reason. Maybe they are crying for how bad that scene is or what mistakes they made in the past that they ended up in this position in life but I’m sure they didn’t cry for what Vijay said in that scene. In another scene Vijay and Samantha cry together after getting to know that Vijay’s mother had agreed to their marriage. I can keep listing so many examples like these but you get the point.
I’ll refrain myself from commenting about how they completely ruined the words baby and pappa and how I will never be able to utter those words in my entire life ever again (they could have left twinkle twinle little star alone at least). I’ll also not comment about the various very obvious logical glitches since I’m sure there wasn’t a least bit of effort put into writing this screenplay. There wasn’t much to do in this film regarding acting. Good guys had to force themselves to cry unnecessarily and bad guys had to get their ass kicked in every other scene. I’m sure this film will sweep so many awards in various nonsensical award shows next year and maybe after that at least people would stop watching all these stupid award shows.
Another scene closely following crying scenes in this film is fight scenes. It was like watching Lollu Sabha’s bakery all over again. When Vijay decides to make a comeback to the police department, it can’t be a normal scene where he just shows up with some buildup music. There HAD to be an unnecesarily bad cop doing something against the law. There HAD to be a group of innocent old people trying to seek redemption. There HAD to be rain and no current. Because we don’t know that Vijay is a badass already and they HAD to remind us about it in every other scene. How else are we going to appreciate the film, right?
I commend Atlee’s effort to bring in so many messages in to the film but things go beyond control there as well. He has tried to give some solution for quite a handful of social issues in this film that I’m not even sure if he understands correctly. Even before something is solved, some other issue is brought up. Half way into the film, I got confused as to which issue Vijay is trying to solve currently. Why these directors are so obsessed with solving social issues in every film that involves a big hero, I’ll never understand.
To add to all this annoyance, this film has made more than a 100 crores in box office. And on top of that there are these people who call themselves ‘vijay fans’ who praise this film as a milestone in tamil cinema. And on top of that, another group of people called ‘meme makers’ come up with such mesmerising art every day that takes over the film itself. And as an icing on the top, the film is declared as a hit thanks to these word of mouth reviews and media reviewers giving positive reviews to spice up their sales. Now everyone related to this film would believe that what they have created is a masterpiece and continue to make absolutely worthless pieces of shit like these. Thanks, Obama!
Apart from myself, I blame everyone who were responsible for this film to get made for successfully ruining my summer vacation.
