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Sunday, December 22, 2024
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TAMIL VELAIILLA PATTADHARI 2
EDITOR'S PICK
'VIP 2': High on drama, low on emotions (Review By Troy
Ribeiro, Rating: **1/2 )
This film suffers from sequel fatigue but unlike its prequel, this is not really
an underdog story.
Taking off from where it left in its prequel, the 2014 released "VIP", it is the
tale of the jobless, yet conscientious engineer, Raghuvaran (Dhanush).
He is now married to his neighbourhood sweetheart and is humility personified.
He is still working for Anitha Constructions, commutes on his favourite moped
whom he calls "Soundari" and becomes a brave-heart after a couple of drinks.
The film begins with him winning the prestigious, "Engineer of the Year Award",
at a shoddily presented function, where all the awards have been predominantly
taken by Vasundhara Constructions, a company headed by the snooty and arrogant,
Vasundara Parmeshwara (Kajol).
After the awards, when he is invited to join Vasundhara Constructions, he flatly
refuses on grounds of loyalty. Taking offence to this, Vasundhara ensures that
he not only loses his job but can't survive in the city. How Raghuvaran tilts
the scales in his favour, forms the crux of this tale.
With the story credited to Dhanush, arrogance and humility are the two key
factors that propel this "mass appeal" plot. Gimmicky scenes and songs are
gummed up to create star appeal and this one hour film is stretched to two, with
Dhanush's heroism going nowhere in particular.
The first half of the narrative meanders with meaningless scenes. It is only ten
minutes after intermission, when Raghuvaran gets motivated, by his father and
dead mother, that the film gets some semblance of a concrete progression.
The dialogues are mundane and rustic. Some peppered with lyrics of the early
1970s Hindi film songs, the director manages to extract empathy from its older
audience. But overall, the lines lack punch both in weightage and delivery. But
nevertheless, it is Dhanush's antics that keeps the audience hooked.
With his ordinary boyish charm, Dhanush does make an effortless impact. But it
is his larger than life character and over-the-top acting with his artificially
created superstar swag, that make him look out of place. Nevertheless, he is
lovable.
Kajol as the antagonist and femme-fatale Vasundhara is an eye-sore. She does not
gravitate from frowning.
Amala Paul as Raghuvaran's wife Shalini and Ritu Verma as Raghuvaran's boss of
Anita Construction are relegated to the background with miniscule roles.
Samuthirakani as Raghuvaran's dad and Vivek as Raghuvaran's younger brother have
their moments of on screen glory.
The music in the film does have its moments and the choreography is the typical
big-ticket jamboree and they do nothing in terms of the narrative.
Overall, the film is astutely mounted.
VIP 2 : What's Kajol doing in a film as silly as
this? (Review By Subhash K. Jha ; Rating: *1/2)
Confession time. I haven't seen the first "VIP" film. And after seeing the
follow-up, I swear on my favourite Dada Kondke feature, I will never touch
anything with a VIP in it, not even the suitcase.
More confession. "VIP 2" is not a film. It is an abomination. It is two hours of
excruciating self-promotion for Dhanush who is an embarrassment in this film.
Dhanush plays the kind of larger-than-life bully-hero who looked ridiculous even
back in the 1960s when Rajendra Kumar or Gemini Ganesan would saunter on to a
sprawling set representing a well-to-do living room replete with a spiralling
stairway leading upstairs, and hug and kiss a woman 10 years younger and say,
"ceMaa, I've come first-class-first in class" (Please translate into Hindi,
Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, etc).
Dhanush plays Raghuvaran, a first-class-first in everything, including male
chauvinism and self-congratulation. He sings songs about his greatness with his
buddies (terrible ones at that), bullies his pretty wife (Amala Paul, grossly
misused) and swigs his swag at the camera as though it were a hungry leopard in
a zoo.
Then when he takes on a corporate head honcho played by the totally misused
Kajol, he takes on more than he can chew. Which is okay because Dhanush's
character does exactly what the director is doing. Taking on more than can be
handled, they both flounder and fall trembling to the ground.
Soundarya Rajinikanth is, I don't know how to say this politely, not a director
at all. To build on a confrontation between Dhanush's Raghuvaran and Kajol's
entrepreneur Vasundhara, Soundarya uses tropes and cliches from old archival
Rajinikanth starrers. These plot points would make even Rajini sir shudder in
disgust.
Not now, please. Not any more! Who behaves like a Rajini spinoff treating women
with the courteous contempt we usually save for bags filled with detonative
dynamite?
Kajol plays a variation of Sridevi's snooty entrepreneur from Raj Kanwar's
"Laadla", where she would run her finger, cross the bridge of her nose and
bellow, "You understand? You better understand!".
At least Sridevi had a formidable adversary in Anil Kapoor. In "VIP 2", Kajol's
confrontation sequences with Dhanush are so high-pitched and hysterical that the
verbal sparring threatens to come apart at the seams to expose the hollowness of
this film's anarchic gender war.
"VIP 2" empowers mediocrity to the extent that it (mediocrity) seems the only
natural status to be attained in the course of the storytelling. Some day Kajol
will show this film to her grand-kids as an example of how wrong a sensible
seemingly intelligent professional's judgement can go when she is focusing on
the zeroes on her pay cheque.
You understand? You better understand!
Actor Dhanush, currently basking in the success of Tamil action-drama "VIP 2", says he may reunite with his filmmaker brother Selvaraghavan next year for a project. Read More
Would love to direct 'VIP 3', says Soundarya RajinikanthBasking in the success of Dhanush starrer "VIP 2", director Soundarya Rajinikanth says she would love to direct the planned third part in the "VIP" franchise.Read More
