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Monday, March 22, 2010

Thaanthonni

Medium : Malayalam
Starring : Prithviraj, Saikumar, Suresh Krishna, Suraaj Venjarammood, Ambika, Sheela

Director : George Vargheese

Music : Thej Merwin, Gopi Sundar (bg score)


The 50+ films older actor Prithviraj is termed
as the rising star of the new generation. Within the last 8years, he has tried his best to achieve his own position in malayalam and tamil langauges. This has reached its peak as he got a chance to act in director Maniratnam's new film, 'Raavana' which is releasing by the middle of this year. His films like 'Puthiya Mukham' & 'Robinhood' were also included among the few successes happened in the industry last year. It is a fact that a minority malayalee group is still hesitating to accept the new youthful actor.

Prithviraj's n
ew film 'Thaanthonni' is directed by debutant George Vargheese, who has once associated directors like Padmakumar, Anil.C Menon and Bipin Prabhakar. T.A.Shahid, who still has got 'Raajamanikyam' and 'Balettan' as his best works, is the script writer. His previous like 'Alibhai', 'Natturaajavu', 'Kaakki', 'One Way Ticket' etc didn't do well. Sheela ('Maya Bazaar' fame) is the heroine here. The film is produced and distributed by Marikar films.

Kochukunju
(Prithviraj) is the young member of a big family based in malabar. He lived with his mother (Ambika), uncles (Captain Raju, Raamu, Vijayaraghavan) and the rest of the family members. The unemployed angry young man is shown as a drunkard guy most of the time. At one stage he even beats the police inspector. His brothers doesn't like his trouble making character. Every time when the partition of the property happens, Kochukunju leaves the scene without co-operating with them. Later, his advocate brother (Suresh Krishna) got linked with a murder and it was the hero who saved him from it when a friend of him came forward to accept the charges. When the hero's lover (Sheela), reaches a big wind wheel estate as a part of his thesis works, the hero appears there by telling that he is the owner of the whole land and tells how he became rich, through a cinematic flashback. In the later portions, he is taking revenge against those people who had destroyed his god father. In the end, Kochukunju reveals his real face. He is now accepted by the family members. His father (Saikumar) also appears in the climax; he was considered dead by the villagers once and now it is time for the re-union.

The starting of the film with the voice over of Balachandran Chullikkad and Aliyar is a cliche. The scenes in which the hero appearing in costly cars and tells the reason for becoming a multimillionaire is suitable for a b-grade old tamil film. As every hero oriented films, here also heroine has got a couple of dialogues accompanied by a duet song only ('Periya Thevare...' song and the dance choreographed by Kala is not attractive). Prithviraj, in the title role is ok, but i smelled overacting in few areas and imitating Mohanlal in the drunken scenes are evident. Suraaj Venjarammood is as usual placed to generate comedy; still he is practicing the bad custom of giving witty dialogues as the background voice in shots where there are no dialogues placed. Ambika, as the hero's mother doesn't share a good chemistry with the son's character.

The fight sequence in the desert featuring the three villains are not good. TA Shahid's script is poor, the definition given by him for the friendship is a childish one and the whole situation where the hero's friend accepting the murder charges on behalf of the hero, is not created seriously. 'Kaattu Paranjathum...' song is hummed by the hero many times, the same song in senior singer KP Udayabhanu's voice doesn't suits Saikumar's character. His make up also felt cinematic in the old age period. Cinematographer Sajith Menon ('Kadha Samvidhanam Kunjakko' fame) and editor Bijith Bala ('Calcutta News', 'Maya Bazaar' fame) didn't created extra ordinary visuals to be quoted here. The bg score by Gopi Sundar is good.

With a single film, Prithviraj tried to dominate the image of stars like Rajnikanth and Vijay, by incorporating unbelievable situations. He should keep in mind that the viewers are fed up with these kind of heroism and films like 'Thaanthonni' won't help at this stage of his career.


Rating : 4.5 / 10

3 comments:

verum vaakku said...

prasanth please edit the director's name of thanthonni,is George Vargheese

prasanth said...

thanx for showing the right path, it is corrected...

prasanth

Sanal Kumar Sasidharan said...

nicely written