BIG SCREEN
Movie: Tamil Padam
Cast: Shiva
Spoofs are a rare breed of films which perfectly recreate the imperfections or cult scenes of other films for us to laugh at. In Hollywood we have the “Scary Movie” series as cult while films like “Epic Movie” end being trashed for it only tries hard to make us laugh losing the spontaneity needed for these kind of films. “Tamil Padam” treads the path between these two with its ingenious concepts and also the forced comedies (mokais).
Slapstick situations
There is a scene where Shiva, the long-lost son of his father Mokai, on learning his family song from Mac book breaks into English pop to meet his estranged family. Needless to say how this scene worked! Let's look at another scene or rather a concept: a guy gets kidnapped only to be gifted to a female rowdy on her birthday. Here again we are forced to laugh at the happenings. This imbalance and the lack of control over the larger picture are the things that reduce the level of this movie.
Wait a second. What am I talking — things like larger picture, intrusions of failed puns and over used gags; who needs all that?; the point that they have made or tried to make fun of something has worked for the film, letting people tolerate such trivialities to laugh out loud at things we had earlier tolerated or praised.
Call it the conditioning of the audience or smart marketing, people want to enjoy everything about “Tamil Padam”. Who wouldn't want to, after enjoying the gags, reminiscing the “Lollu Sabha” days (also for the standard of mokai that was dished out here), after seeing Shiva in his now trademark facial expression and dialogue delivery, killing people in the oddest way possible and trying to justify it with his serious look and the build-up attached to it. This might not look like a complete movie but the experience is what matters. Enjoy before you get bored.
Harish is a Final year Automobile Engineering student at SVCE
