Yaaradi Nee Mohini
Director: Mithran R. Jawahar
Actors:  Dhanush, Nayantara, Raghuvaran
Music: Yuvan Shankar Raja
Story, Screenplay & Dialogs: Selvaraghavan

What an ugly movie!

Is there no respite for suffering Tamil movie fans from garbage like Yaaradi Nee Shani oops Yaaradi Nee Mohini?

Yaaradi Nee Shani is the usual ugly Kollywood combination of a pathetic story, disgusting acting and hopeless music.

Three people deserve maximum blame for the disgraceful concoction that is Yaaradi Nee Mohini - director Jawahar, story/screenplay/dialog writer Selvaraghavan and actress Nayantara - but others like Dhanush and Yuvan Shankar Raja are also unstinting in contributing generously to the overall misery quotient.

In one scene toward the end of Yaaradi Nee Shani, an angry Dhanush yells Mundo at Nayantara.  Never has a more apt epithet been hurled at an actress in the annals of Tamil cinema.

An utterly incompetent actress bereft of any graces, Nayantara torments and heaps agony on moviegoers in film after film ad nauseum, ad infinitum.

In our view, Nayantara seems to be selected by Tamil film directors in fond and illusory hopes that the audience will focus on her bountiful physical assets and ignore her total lack of acting talent.

Nayantara can’t act, she can’t dance and she ain’t even all that pretty.

Lately, a scowl seems to be a permanent fixture on Nayantara’s face. You saw her ugly, irritating scowl in Billa and by God that same ugly scowl returns to torture us in Yaaradi Nee Mohini.

Just what is this wooden actress capable of? Not much, at least in the world of Tamil cinema.

Selvaraghavan deserves blame for his inability to weave a gripping tale in Yaaradi Nee Mohini. It’s yet another hackneyed, implausible love story with nary an interesting twist.

To boost the entertainment quotient, good storytellers pick an unusual theme and then build a fine story layer after layer after layer, a technique Selvaraghavan wouldn’t recognize if it hit him in the face. Yaaradi Nee Shani is the kind of trite and disjointed story that needs as much time to put on paper as one needs to brush one’s teeth.

As for that amateur director Jawahar, this bozo should be hung, drawn and quartered for unleashing such garbage as Yaaradi Nee Shani on unsuspecting Tamil movie fans. Apparently, Jawahar was an assistant to Selvaraghavan. Nice pair - Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

The movie centers round an unemployed youth Vasu (Dhanush), who lives with his ailing teacher father (Raghuvaran). Upon seeing Keerthi (Nayantara), a manager at a software firm, it’s love at sight for Vasu. To the great surprise of his father who’s given up all hope of his son amounting to anything, Vasu manages to secure a job in the same firm.

But for Keerthi, the crude buffoon that’s Vasu doesn’t exist. Before you can say Kadavule, Kadavule, Keerthi one day slaps Vasu and his father.

Dhanush doesn’t do a good job either in Yaaradi Nee Shani although he’s not as bad as Nayantara. It’s downright ridiculous to see this skinny, pencil-thin fellow bashing up a group of thugs, each of whom is at least twice his size.

In two crucial scenes in Yaaradi Nee Shani - first, during the confrontation with Nayantara at an Australian beach and later, in the village on the eve of her marriage - Dhanush fails to deliver the acting goods. He looks tired and just goes through the motions of acting.

Music by Yuvan Shankar Rajai s deplorable. What, oh what, is the meaning or purpose of suddenly introducing that ghastly song oh baby, oh baby in the train? The song is awful, the choreography atrocious and the entire song-distance sequence abominable.

The late Raghuvaran delivers a decent performance as Vasu’s father as does the girl who plays Nayantara’s sister Anandavalli a.k.a Pooja in the movie. What an irony that Raghuvaran’s filmi funeral in the movie was preceded just a few days earlier by his real funeral. Raghuvaran will be missed.

To be fair, the movie did get a few laughs out of us and the small group of people at that horrrid theater Movie City on Oak Tree Road in Edison (New Jersey) with some garden variety, cheap jokes.

All in all, watching Yaaradi Nee Shani amounts to a complete waste of time and money.

And the caravan of pathetic Tamil movies continues.