We need to be honest here, none of us walked into the theatre today hoping to watch THAT one Malaysian Tamil movie that is going to change the face of the industry - but we did go hoping for a movie that will at least serve us a decent storyline, accompanied by an above average technicality in terms of filmmaking, something that Vedigundu Pasanga somehow managed last month.
But what we ended up getting is the following - a regular kampung Indian mother who wears thick foundation and eye liner, an ATM machine that cashes out RM10k in a single transaction, school kid spelling errors, (ex: After few month), a dead body that is perfectly bandaged on the head laying on a bed at the hospital, a (supposedly murderous) villain that is taught to change by his father by twisting his arm and slapping him on his head and to top it all off....
An overreacting lead actress who clearly thinks that she is the reincarnated version of Genelia in Santhosh Subramaniam.
Shalini Balasundaram, whose previous body of work include Geethaiyan Radhai suffers from the same level of obliviousness of her acting skills which was exhibited in GR. Unfortunately, her acting comes across as completely annoying to a movie goer. Unless if her character is retarded (which the last time we checked, she wasn’t), she needs to understand acting cute does not always equal to cuteness in a movie. We are still clueless reason why NO ONE in the film set pointed out that her acting skills is ridiculous? Is it because she's the director?
The movie, riding on the theme of snatch theft, a similar theme that was also highlighted in Vedigundu Pasanga shows complete lack of interest in wanting to tell a story about the syndicate – instead it concentrates on an amaturiesh level of storytelling where it sometimes reminds you of a college class assignment. Did the movie not go through a first round of proofreading?
Here’s an example of a scene.
Saresh, after years of going after Shalini is then shown to be dating another girl (we are told this by a SINGLE scene of the new girl on his lap). When Shalini reappears in his life, the new girl (at this point, we forgot her name because as with everyone else, her acting was just bad) gets jealous and calls to break up with Saresh. Seconds later, she calls him back to tell him that she’s breaking up with him AGAIN. Seconds later, she calls him asking them not to break up. WHY THE NEED FOR A COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT SCENE Shalini? Where are we going with this?
Screenplay writing seems to be a skill lost in the Malaysian Tamil movie scene and with Thirudathey Papa Thirudathey, Shalini Balasundaram indicates just how clueless she and her writing team are. In fact, scratch that, this doesn’t seem to be a product of a “writing team” at all. Not a single scene seems to be well-constructed enough to deliver the purpose of that particular scene. Too many unnecessary dialogues and scene makes this movie such a pain to actually sit and muster through. The dialogue writer has no clue about how to engage an audience with the sentences that your characters utter and especially doesn’t seem to have any idea regarding when your character should shut up.
The editor, compliments this “well” by intercutting multiple angles of the dialogue scenes so frequently that at the end of the exchange, you feel like someone took hold of you and shook you furiously back and forth, it’s makes you nauseous. Someone needs to tell the editor that editing a dialogue exchange isn’t just about showing the speaking character on screen at every instance, it’s about portraying to the audience the emotion that is meant to be expressed. In that sense, how long a shot is held before being cut matters. The pacing of it all matters. Your audience cannot focus on what’s being said in your movie when you’re putting their eyes and brain on overdrive trying to settle on the constantly changing visuals.
This logic applies for some crucial scenes in the movie as well. In the climax (one of it anyway), Shalini is confessing to Saresh in what is supposed to be a calm and beautiful scene. But this is rapidly intercut with a scene of the villain, Kabil’s “Raja” character out on a revenge mission, aggressively shouting and proceeding to murder someone. We get it, both this events occur at the same time in the movie, but intercutting two very emotionally contrasting scenes together isn’t the way to go. We, the audience, end up not being able to “feel” or “connect” to any one of the scenes. Having multiple layers in your movie is great, but not when the audience are not able to properly indulge in even one of it. Here, the movie fails completely.
In terms of casts, the movie sees Saresh (Sly Squad), Yuvaraj (Venpa) and a couple of others whom we did not remember due to the level of bad acting. Saresh looks his part as a doting son and a lover. But if at all the movie had any little glittering hope, it comes in the form of Yuvaraj Krishnaswamy.
Yuvaraj looks like a proper actor. Someone who understands his strength lies in the comical sequences and his ability to deliver dialogues with easiness that puts some of the most experienced actors in the country to shame. Here’s a upcoming star, who if dealt well can go on to become a proper actor in the industry.
In terms of technicalities, the film swings between below average cinematography and completely amateurish camera work. Did the team not have the money to hire proper cameras? Were the need to use POV shots necessary? Did the editor give up on the movie on the edit table? Why did Zithish (Ennai Kollathey fame) decide to use a series of vocals shouting HOO HAA HOO HAA as background music?
So many questions – and we don’t really want to know the answer.
General readers might find this review pretty harsh, but that’s the harsh reality of the Malaysian Tamil film industry that we find ourselves in. What do we need to give to get a Malaysian tamil movie that is decent in quality? Both in story and in technical skills. Why does filmmakers find the need to share Pendidikan Moral lessons in the movie when it’s completely unneccesary? Was it because of the involvement of FINAS?
In summary, Thirudathey Pappa Thirudathey is yet another example of how filmmaking in Malaysia is being taken for granted. There’s a HUGE room for improvement, but we are not sure it is going to be filled up anytime soon.
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