At its best Kanimozhi , the first movie from UniQ Productions directed by debutant Sripathy Rangasamy, is a genuine attempt at creating realistic cinema that also entertains. But at its worst, it is a dull, boring dose of realism that leaves you feeling cheated by the time the credits roll.
Young directors in Tamil, in the last few years, have rediscovered the art of tailoring stories for middle-class heroes. The additional frills for the stars — the incredible fight sequences, bizarre twists and coincidences, songs that turn the hero overnight into a responsible, rich person and so forth — have been kept out. At the core though are a fairly good script and screenplay. The recently successful Boss Engira Baskaran is a good example of that trend. Kanimozhi misses out on both counts. What we get instead is a cliché-ridden movie.
Rajesh (Jai) is a reserved young man and an aspiring director. The visual communications student has all the qualities typical of heroes of this genre of movies: irresponsible, spoilt, dreamy and reserved when it comes to talking to women, especially the one he is most interested in. He has a rather peculiar way of writing his diary (which probably is the only element of any interest in a story so wafer-thin and insipid that revealing it would be basically spelling out the entire movie).
Shazahn Padamsee debuts in Tamil as the heroine without a name, one who sets Rajesh's heart aflutter even as she just walks past him. She has only one exchange of dialogue with the hero in the entire movie. Gowshik (Vijay Vasanth) is the son of a French tuition teacher, who's father's class is the one the heroine goes to, who is also interested in her, and seems to be interested in almost all the things that the hero is interested in. Does that count for weird coincidence? Yes and no, because nothing spectacular happens on that count.
Though the actors — to an acceptable level Jai and his gang of boys (Micheal, Ranga, Aswin Raja) have played their parts convincingly — they are let down not by a bad script but by the lack of it. There are some sequences in the movie that are an endurance test on the patience of the audience. Like the elaborate ones establishing the fact that both Rajesh and Gowshik seem to like the same things.
Technically this evidently low-budget venture seems to be hitting all the par notes. The music by Sathish Chakravarthy though is above par — especially the song ‘Muzhumathi' sung by Vijay Yesudas and Bal Shende, and written by Na. Muthukumar.
Kanimozhi
Genre: Drama/Comedy
Director: Sripathy Rangasamy
Cast: Jai, Shazahn Padamsee, Vijai Vasanth, Michael
Storyline: A regular boy loves girl story with weird twists.
Bottomline: A real test of your patience. Watch it at your own risk.
