Idhu Enna Maayam will go into the annals of history for inventing a new position in hockey — the pinch-hitting batsman. In one unintendedly hilarious scene, Arun (Vikram Prabhu), a proficient batsman, thumps his chest and steps into the hockey pitch when his college badly needs him. He figures that “both sports are about a bat hitting the ball, after all”. In barely a couple of minutes, he realises his folly, and then, remedies his misjudgment with an idea no hockey coach could have come up with. He runs near the opponent’s goal post, takes a cricketing stance, and waits for the ball to be aerial-passed to him, so he can choose if he wants to drive, hook or pull the hockey ball to the goal. It’s a commercial film, and you just don’t ask questions about plausibility.
Ironically enough, Idhu Enna Maayam ’s main idea seems to parody these very films in the beginning, when Arun and friends decide to create a company called UMT ( Unnal Mudiyum Thambi ), to help single men in love get the woman of their dreams. Having been part of a failed theatre group, the means they employ to accomplish this is quite interesting. They decide to orchestrate reality, like a director does a film scene. This idea, quite possibly, could have been inspired by any one of those million YouTube ‘insane marriage proposal’ videos, in which a man, aided usually by an event management company, creates an extraordinary experience for his girlfriend and just as she stands, mouth open in amazement, pops the question.
Much like in these videos, UMT hires extras, writes dialogues for its scenes, and the girl its male client is in love with becomes an unwitting participant, essentially manipulated into love. The orchestrated moments are nothing great; they’re everything you’ve seen in bad love films. A recurring idea is to have an extra deliberately run into the woman, and just as she’s about to fall down, who should be waiting in the shadows to hold her but the company’s male client. At that very moment, the company’s two other employees shower flowers on the couple, and play ‘Hosanna’ aloud respectively. Two or three similar ideas later, the girl is shown being smitten with the client. Looking beyond the efficacy of these ideas, there’s no question that this is some serious manipulation. Imagine that the most beautiful moments in your life were staged by an organisation in return for some money from your lover. You could file a case against the hero and win it with a bad lawyer.
You see through the film that Arun isn’t a particularly ethical individual. In fact, for almost an entire half of the film, he’s busy swindling money from a rich man, while secretly sabotaging his plans, owing to self-interest. Some hero. He declares initially that UMT will only help men who are really in love with a girl, and not those in it for the fun. And the means he employs to figure this out is by asking a potential male client to explain why his love is pure. One client, whose room is full of creepy cutouts of the model he’s in love with, responds with something as corny as, “ Avala aayiram paerku pidikkalaam, but andha aayirathula avalukaana oruthan naan .” Presto, Arun is convinced this is true love. Go figure. The problem is not that Arun has questionable morals, but how little the film is concerned with it.
You could have forgiven Idhu Enna Maayam if it, at least, stuck to its guns and concerned itself solely with developing its core idea — of a company that sets up love for money. But instead, it prefers to spend time on Arun’s flashback that seems to go on forever, and in the picturisation of some uninspiring songs (G. V. Prakash). There’s a cheeky scene towards the end where a fake doctor examines a patient’s body and remarks that while the A and B centres are fine, the C centre could be a problem. It appears that they’re overestimating the film.
Genre : Rom-com
Director : A. L. Vijay
Cast : Vikram Prabhu, Keerthi Suresh, Charlie
Storyline: A man starts a business to help men get the woman of their dreams
