by SI blog reader Racer44
(Readers: SI’s comments follow this essay)
Having completed over 92 years since its inception (the first silent Tamil movie Keechaka Vadham was released in 1917), it is only obvious that we ask ourselves, where is Tamil Cinema headed? (ignoring, of course, naysayers like SI who say that it’s headed from deep shit to deeper shit).
The decades gone by have rung in many changes, the immense technological advances not the least among them.
As Tamil cinema progressed from the silent era to black and white talkies and later to Eastman Color and the present digital age, the kind of films made also diversified, from period dramas involving rajas and ranis which had their origins in religion and folklore to stories that are more grounded in the reality of today, drawing their inspiration from the life of the common man, whose trials and tribulations they served to document and whose mundane love-stories were blown up into larger-than-life romances on celluloid.
But for the sake of identifying Tamil Cinema’s current course, it should be sufficient if we restrict our gaze to the last 2-3 years of its existence.
Many would agree that these are the heydays of Tamil Cinema, what with Kollywood’s first forays into the adventure-fantasy genre with the much-feted Aayirathil Oruvan, its first full-length spoof in Tamil Padam and very soon, its first science fiction film in Enthiran.
While these are significant milestones in themselves, what is truly heartening is the emergence of a new breed of directors keen on experimenting with hitherto untouched themes and spinning innovative and absorbing narratives out of them.
Arivazhagan’s Eeram, Samuthirakani’s Nadodigal, and Pandiraj’s Pasanga: each of these films is special, in that they not only strike an off-the-beaten-path approach in their story and storytelling but have also struck gold at the box office. None of the aforementioned films had any big name on the credits, and two of them (Eeram and Pasanga) were directed by debutants.Yet each of these found an audience willing to embrace the envelope-pushing. The advent of the multiplex has contributed, in no small degree, to these films’ success.
In times when an ever-increasing number of movies vie for the same pie, it is the bloated “masala” movies which find themselves forced to adapt in terms of story and setting in order to stay relevant. Audiences worldwide have shown little patience at nonsensical movies like Villu and Kutty causing them to quickly bite the dust once word-of-mouth spreads.
As the average Tamil-movie-goer would say, Matter irukkanum.
(Thanks to SI blog reader Gandhiji)
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Folks, what is it that Tamils in the UK drink?
Whatever it is, could we please force some of the same down the deep throats of Tamils in the U.S., Tamils in India, Tamils in Malaysia, Tamils in Sri Lanka et al.
It’s with mucho gusto we disclose to you that UK Tamils have soundly rejected Gautam Menon’s latest piece of shit Vinnaithaandi Varuvaayaa.
If any shit deserves to fail, it’s this stupid shit Vinnaithaandi Varuvaaya.
Boy, we haven’t had such good news this cold winter in the U.S.
A class-less, crass-full movie, Vinnaithaandi Varuvaaya is amateur stuff that high school students here would be embarrassed of making. Utter drivel.
Well, no ever accused Kollywood of a surfeit of quality. Right?
For the opening February 26-28, 2010 weekend, Vinnaithaandi Varuvaaya could manage a total gross of a mere £13,247 and average gross of £2,649.
Pitiful.
In what can only be described as the mother of all disgraces, Vinnaithaandi Varuvaayaa has fared worse than Vishal’s monstrosity Sathyam.
Now that’s a feat we never thought Gautam Menon could achieve. But the Menon bozo never ceases to surprise when it comes to winning booby prizes.
Here see for yourself in the below table how badly Vinnaithaandi Varuvaayaa has fared at the UK box office compared to a few prominent Tamil movies:
Here’s an excerpt from SearchIndia.com’s review of Vinnaithaandi Varuvaayaa:
Boring Shit
Is there any one among you that can answer this question – How did this Vinnaithaandi Varuvaayaa abortion come to be made and how did it get to be released in theaters?
UK Tamils Bugger Vinnaithaandi Varuvaayaa at BO;
Trisha, Simbhu, Menon Hang Your Heads in Shame
Goat-fucking idiots! Offspring of lunatic donkeys! Shameless eunuchs from somewhere.
- the drunks yelling in the beggar-van in Rohinton Mistry’s tour de force A Fine Balance P.323
Thank God, fictional drunks can’t watch Vinnaithaandi Varuvaayaa.
For if they did, the tipplers wouldn’t hesitate one nanosecond before unleashing the same vitriolic barrage at (mis)director Gautam Menon and the twin midgets in his menagerie i.e. Simbhu and Trisha besides hurling a few more choice epithets at these offenders.
Boring Shit
Is there any one among you that can answer this question – How did this Vinnaithaandi Varuvaayaa abortion come to be made and how did it get to be released in theaters?
Since you schmucks can’t answer that, here’s our hypothesis: Some Stalin or Grimalkin had more money than it knew what to do with and the end-result was this boring shit called Vinnaithaandi Varuvaayaa.
If you go by the credits, Gautham Menon has also penned the story for this grossly underwhelming movie.
Yet another unimaginative, trite love story, Vinnaithaandi Varuvaayaa offers little charm to the audience.
Same old boy sees girl, falls head-over-heels in love drivel. And as y’all know the course of true love never does run smooth in Indian films and opposition invariably comes by way of the stubborn father and the different religions of the lovers.
That’s all there’s to this junk. Really, guys.
And we yawned through the ennui for 2 hours and 30-minutes.
To think that this Menon fella has been making movies for a decade and this shitty script is all he can come up with?
Sad. Depressing.
Depressing Acting
Simbhu or Vombhu or wateva name this Little Supershit is known by is no great shakes as an actor.
We saw him earlier in Vallavan and tonight in this abortion.
Vinnaithaandi Varuvaayaa Review – Stupid Shit
Folks, our worst fears and your best hopes have both been realized tonight.
We’ve lost it.
Not one small screw or even a few screws but all our screws have been threaded out of their sockets.
Yes, we’ve braved the snow-storm and strong winds barreling up the North-East to watch the premiere show of Vinnaithaandi Varuvaayaa.
As to why we would choose to commit this kind of Harakiri we’ve no idea.
Maybe, it’s Satan’s minions at work. Or chalk it up to the Vegetable Dumplings in Hot Garlic Sauce we had a short while ago.
Or maybe it’s Allah’s curses raining down on us for all our impieties.
Wateva.
Here we are in the hall waiting for the Tamil movie Vinnaithaandi Varuvaayaa to start.
For the benefit of the schmucks (and there are quite a few amongst our readers), Vinnaithaandi Varuvaayaa comes to us courtesy Tamil film ‘director’ Gautham Menon.
Yeah, the same freak who gave us that grotesquerie Vaaranam Aayiram.
Vinnaithaandi Varuvaayaa features our bête noire Trisha Krishnan and that podi payan Simbhu.
From what we’ve gleaned, Vinnaithaandi Varuvaayaa is a love story.
There are about 40 people in the movie hall. Not bad considering the snow-storm forecast.
Guys, we don’t know if we can survive Vinnaithaandi Varuvaayaa.
Schmucks, if we don’t come out of this trial by fire vertically, consider this post our sayonara.
It’s been nice knowing y’all. Maybe. 
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Vinnaithaandi Varuvaayaa Review – Stupid Shit
by SI blog reader Racer44
A conversation between two chaps exiting the theater, having survived the ordeal of watching Theeratha Vilayattu Pillai.
Chappie A: Machan, indha moonjikku Playboy kaekkudha? Periya Manmadha kunjunu nenappu.
Chappie B: Vidu Machan, namma moonjikku neetu chandra kaekumpodhu, avan mattum enna pannuvaan?
Chappie A: Aanalum mavane, indha director paiyan mattum kaiyila kedaicha…..an
At the end of this interminably long freak-show, I could hear not one but several such angry outbursts pouring forth in the theater.
Unrelenting Savagery
I admit I had deep forebodings even as I entered the theater. The little I had seen of this fella Vishal had not enthused me a great deal. But little did I comprehend the unrelenting savagery in store for me.
From the very first frame till some three hours later, when the surreal nightmare ended, Vishal assaults your senses mercilessly, leaving you gasping for breath.
Breath does come, in intermittent spurts, in the form of the three hot girls Tejaswini (Neetu Chandra), Jyoti (Tanushree Dutta) and Priya (Sarah-Jane Dias). But no sooner do we rest our wounded eyes on these beauties than we are pummeled back into our state of wretchedness as Vishal, with his I-am-the-resident-baboon style, wanders around hopelessly trying to convince us he is a playboy.
Drivel of a Plot
The story, like many other things in this film, is so outrageously preposterous that it staggers the mind. The film has hardly started, and immediately the unwitting audience are sold crap about how Karthik (Vishal) is a guy who wants the best in everything he desires, and he now wants a wife. So Karthik decides to simultaneously fall in love with three beautiful girls and then choose one to his liking.
As a battle-hardened audience try to digest this drivel of a plot, Vishal sets off on his “wooing” spree, dealing mortal blows to the by-now brain-numbed audience along the way. Bereft of even the most basic acting skills, this fella would fail to get even a single paisa were he to, one day, beg for alms. It beggars belief how such nincompoops without a shred of talent manage to survive, that too as hero, in an industry where one failure can spell the end of your career.
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