Junga ’s director Gokul’s 2013 film Idharkuthane Aasaipattai Balakumara is a comedy I revisit at least once every year. It’s no Citizen Kane , but there are moments in the film that just keep on giving, especially the last 10 minutes or so when Vijay Sethupathi’s character flirts with his lover (Kumudha), even as a dying patient waits for his rare blood.
Even Gokul’s more recent Kaashmora was quite a funny film — well at least until it switches gears and goes all Baahubali on you. I felt both these films would have been a lot better if they’d stuck to making a full-length comedy, something like a Farrelly Brothers film.
Junga wants to be that film. It never takes itself too seriously; all it tries to do is set up one comedy scene after another. Like Idharkuthane... , it’s a film that relies on performances alone for its laughs, which could be a problem, because if you don’t find the actors funny, then there’s nothing the film has to offer in terms of dialogues and situations.
- Genre: Comedy
- Director: Gokul
- Cast: Vijay Sethupathi, Yogi Babu, Sayyeshaa
- Storyline: A stingy don travels to France to kidnap his enemy’s daughter
And that’s the problem with Junga , a particularly one-note comedy. It tells the story of a third-generation don named Junga (Vijay Sethupathi), who is extremely stingy. His dream is to buy back a movie theatre that was his ancestral property, and he’s ready to save every penny he earns to do that… even if it means using his jeep as a share taxi when he’s on his way to kill someone.
A cheap protagonist is not something we see every day, and the jokes seems to be working as long as it’s the actors that have to do their work. The money jokes are doubly funny because Sethupathi is also the producer of the film.
As long as the film is set in India, it works fine, because there’s a great team of supporting actors making sure that Vijay Sethupathi doesn’t do all the heavy lifting. So when the story moves to Paris, and these characters disappear, we see how one-dimensional these characters actually are, even Junga.
From here on, almost every single joke is related to his stinginess. The same goes for Yogi Babu. There’s nothing cleverer than fat jokes and food jokes for his character either.
There was a freshness to Sethupathi’s comic roles and how he mumbled his dialogues back when he was still a new actor. Now, after many years, the same cannot be said. Sethupathi needs clever writing to pull off comedy and his dialogue delivery alone cannot save it.
Even so, one can watch out for moments in the second half where Junga’s grandmother takes centre stage. It feels like sunshine on a rainy day and I hope we get to see a lot more of her in the future. As for the rest, it’s probably better to just revisit Soodhu Kavvum again.
