REVIEW : ANNAATTHE (Tamil)

REVIEW

ANNAATTHE (Tamil)

Producer-Sun Pictures

Director-Siruthai Siva

Star Cast-Rajinikant, Keerthy Suresh, Meena, Khushboo, Nayanthara, Prakash Raj, Jagapathi Babu and Soori

Genre-Social

Rating-** (Two)

Predictable and Over the hills!

Jyothi Venkatesh

This rehash of Pasamalar as well as Mullum Malarum is Rajinikanth's 168th film in his career. Produced by Sun Pictures, the rural entertainer is directed by Siruthai Siva. The film boasts an ensemble cast including Keerthy Suresh, Nayanthara, Meena, Khushbu, Prakash Raj, Jagapathi Babu and Soori. The out and out predictable story the film doles out is outdated, and also the film lacks detailing.

Director Siva, whose last outing was Ajith-starrer Viswasam that showcased a father-daughter bond, tries to milk the brother-sister camaraderie to the maximum extent possible. Right from Sivaji Ganeshan in the 60’s till Sivakartikeyan in the 2015’s, the brother-sister sentiment has been squeezed to its maximum limit by the Tamil film industry and Annaatthe is no exception to the rule.

The stale plot revolves around panchayat president Kaalaiyan (Rajinikanth), fondly addressed as Annaatthe by everyone around him, and his sister Thanga Meenatchi (Keerthy Suresh). They dote on each other like crazy. How do we know that? We are told so. In an early scene, we see Kaalayian taking home Meenatchi, who has just returned after completing her studies in Kolkata, in a car. In a sequence in the film, Meenatchi gets all sentimental, and we get a flashback about a mother dying during childbirth and a brother taking on the mother's duties and looking after his sister, which we have seen earlier in umpteen numbers of films.

To be frank, though Rajinikant extracts tears with Keerthy Suresh in this melodrama and does proper justice to his role, he seems to lack that extra dimension which characterized his parts earlier in the 80’s and 90’s and just remains a card board cut out. Though Rajini tries to compensate for the lack of solid out of the box sequences with his suave style and screen presence, which is intact to an extent, Annaatthe just fails to salvage and is in short a film that appeals to the masses in a loud way and is so predictable an over the hills.Though besides Keerthy as Rajini’s sister, a lot of Rajini’s sizzling heroines of the 90’s are also paraded in the film like Khushboo, Meena etc, it is only Nayanthara who lends some credibility in her part as a lawyer. Prakash Raj fails to impress in a role which he is not able to soar to greater heights as an actor.

The writing is clear on the walls as far as Rajinikant is concerned. At 71, he is indeed running out of steam but he is not to be blamed for this. It is time that he started investing on good writers who will etch for him superb roles that will bring out the best of the actor in him and enable him to be in the saddle for the remaining years to come instead of just pandering to the lowest common denominator in film after film in which his acting.