Man Madhan Ambu by K.S Ravikumar
The time-tested combination of Kamal Hassan and KS Ravikumar is a well known successfull combo.. Except for Dasavatharam the rest were all great comedy films, in fact some can be said as classic ie Panchathanthiram.. So, when Manmadhan Ambu was announced everyone was expecting one such film. But then durin promos, Kamal iterated the point that MA is a different film. He might have reiterated that point but then it was not marketed as such, thus people who go there with such expectations are heavily dissapointed.. MA is more of light hearted film and has strong emotions in between but then not all section of audience will be accepting to this sort of film as proved by the failure of Mumbai Express and Anbe Sivam..
Casting - the selection of roles is one of the major assets of this film. Although this movie has lesser number of people than usual and some do have miniscule roles, but the casting was very apt n perfect.. Kamal is not on this radar as he is too big a person to be monitored but still as a die hard fan, he was cool and casual.. and does he look like a 56 year old man? definitely no chance at all.. he's lookin juz like a man in his late 30's.. and i saw so many middle-aged women to be awe-strucked by his looks.. his acting need not to be said.. first class.. especially the scenes where he enacts the poem to Trisha and the dissapointment he shows in his face when Maddy pulls back the offer to help him.. and also not to mention his interaction wif Urvashi and Ramesh Aravind as well.. Basically he has just breezed through the role.. Madhavan did very well wif a lil bit of dark shade and he was super good as a drunkard. His dialogue delivery especially in the bar scenes wif Sreeman and Aakash was great.. Trisha was good as well and it was nice to listen to her own voice but then it was a lil bit too much for me to see her reciting chaste Tamizh poems (lolx).. No offense to her, considering her upbringing.. Kudos to her and hope she's more choosy in her roles.. Sangeetha was the surprise of the lot as the bubbly, frank n modern divorcee with 2 kids especially in the climax when she gets drunk.. All the other actors ie Urvashi, Ramesh Aravind, the 2 Malayalam actors, Usha Uthup all did commendable performances and Suriya was cool in his cameo although Ooviya had nothing to do at all..
Technical wise the film was top notch... Cinematography by Manush Nandan was fresh and delightful as he really captured the beauty of the cruise ship as well as the European countries.. Editing was nice as there was no sudden cuts and jolts in the movie.. Costumes by Gouthami was uber and chick and Kamal and Madhavan were looking dashing in the film.. Trisha's though could have been better.. Music by Devi Sri Prasad is passable as the title track and Neela Vaanam being the pick of the lot. The poem recital was superb but then it was too chaste, I could not decipher what was Kamal really conveying. No complaints, though.. We have to raise our intelligence quotient to understand..Art direction was nice especialy the house interiors and props. Sync sound has been used and it does give a real life look to us but then if there's no proper sound system in the theaters it's a real problem for the viewers to catch up with the dialogues.
Coming to the script, it was much better than Dasavatharam i would say. It's really full of subtle comedies, intelligent dialogues, superb one-liners and enough emotions to hold the script. Dialogues are extremely high in quality and Kamal was brilliant especially when it comes to drawing analogies of real life issues right into the situations of the script ie kaavi dress guys and actresses (ahem), 33% rights for women (poem recital scene), showing himself as someone not into religion (poem recital scene) and the line 'matrimonial was bad but the alimony was good'. But one problem is the screenplay. It really lacks in pace and slowly kills of the mood of viewers.. The excitement level in the film moves in a stop-start mode. Just when we expect the film to move on higher gear, it comes back down and we have to wait a lil further for it to pick up the pace. This continues throughout the movie. At the beginning, the movie has shades of a light hearted Hollywood style movie, then it shows some strong emotions and then in the build up to the climax and further on it has the typical Tamizh film comedy with lots of chaos and confusion.. As a director, KS Ravikumar extracted fantastic acting from all the actors and for organizing rehearsals..
On the whole, MA turns out to be as what Kamal promised.. A different Kamal-KS Ravikumar film with very less slapstick and situational comedies. It's not as great as previous comedy films of this combo but at the same time it's different in offering with good script, cool acting, terrific dialogues, and technically sound film. I wouldn't say it's a funny film but a smart film with sprinkles of comedies in between. It has to be seen how the wide audience accepts this film and it'll be very difficult to hold the attention of the masses as this film tends to the upper class elite audiences..
by Tamil
