Meyaadha Maan (Tamil, 2017)

Vaibhav playing the role of ‘Idhayam’ Murali who is the master of unrequited love, looked so natural and made it enjoyable to watch by inducing just the right amount of fun without becoming a caricature as the character had a good amount of responsibility and affection sketched into it. One can argue this to be Vaibhav’s best portrayal so far and is bound to give him a boost as a lead actor after making his mark in Venkat Prabhu’s multi-starrers.

Debutant director Rathna Kumar makes a rich contribution to the milieu centric movies that have recently turn the tide in Tamil Cinema with this focused on North Chennai. It is virtually impossible to guess this could be a debutant at work, for the amount of smart effort spent in sketching the lead and supporting characters equal in importance!

Vivek Prasanna has got to be the biggest takeaway from the movie as he nails the various facets of friendship and romance involving multiple feelings of joy, sorrow, surprises and disappointments. Indhuja and Priya playing the love interests of Vaibhav and Vivek respectively, put in equally awe inspiring performances as none of it looks forced and flows ever so naturally.

The romantic dialogues were quite to the point and suit the locale of North Chennai just perfectly. The inherent wit is quite prolific with the Kishore wedding reception (the ‘Rock’ song performance especially) and the Indhuja bride seeking sequence, being laugh riots in particular! The songs feature equally rooted lyrics for the gaana songs that made them even more enjoyable!

The Pradeep Kumar and Santosh Narayanan combine seems to provide a heavenly medley of loop worthy music. The distinct Santosh style brims in the ‘Address Song’, ‘Thangachi Song’ and ‘Area Song’ – all of them warranting repeat listens. Pradeep’s melodies stirs the soul unconditionally with ‘Enna Nan Seiven’ being the best of the lot!

The screenplay suffers with pacing issues as it takes its own time to get to the core by the half time, only to falter even more with seemingly forced caste based implications in the lead pair’s already troubled love life. The fact it all seemed phony and alien to the North Chennai core of the movie did not help either and ended up being a drag and made the watch a touch boring.

The double climax of sorts though could have been avoided. We also felt it could have benefited from tighter editing to keep the repetitive conflict-resolution cycles under check and not prolonging the inevitable for as long as it did happen in the end.