Family feud

April 10, 2016 12:00 am | Updated 05:45 am IST

The director of Oyee could be a great choice to author a book called How to Make a Tamil Village Film for Dummies . He knows every cliché and he’s not afraid to use it.

We have the strict patriarch, a pannaiyar as respected as he’s feared. The pannaiyar ’s son Krish (Geethan), our hero, is a jeans-and-t-shirt-sporting dude, who wants to migrate to America. Krish’s best friend, who is also his mama, is a sleaze ball whose every effort is to provide comic relief. And like in most films like these, the resolution in the story comes from the hero regaining his family’s honour—which, in this case, is decided after a contest of… silambam .

Throw into this mix all the confusion that results from the presence of two heroines—the first being the salwar-kameez-wearing goodie-two-shoes, and the second, a ‘modern’ mini-skirt-wearing hottie, who believes Skype is all you need when you miss your mother—and you know where the film’s headed.

The jokes are as flat as they are offensive (an elaborate gag involves Krish trying to rape the heroine to kick her out of his house), the drama is manipulative and you’d be surprised how predictable it all is. If I was able to sit through this film in its entirety, it was only because I played a few games in my head: ‘Which language are the heroines actually speaking in?’, ‘Which decade should this film have released in?’and my favourite, ‘How much popcorn can I eat in a minute?”. The next time somebody calls out to you shouting Oyee , don’t look back; just run.

vishal menon

Oyee

Genre:Comedy

Director:Francis Markus

Cast:Geethan Britto, Eesha, Arjunan Nandhakumar

Storyline:A female prisoner, out on parole, finds refuge in a joint family

Bottomline:Old bottle, stale wine

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