Pandi Oli Perukki Nilayam Movie Reviews

Rasu Madhuravan, who made last year's incestuous Muthukku Muthaaga, returns with yet another tearjerker called Pandi Oli Perukki Nilayam. He tries his hand at comedy in the first half. It is juvenile humour, in excess, attesting to Rasu Madhuravan's belief that the average Tamilian skips puberty. It's very silly albeit watchable.

About halfway through this farce the comedy steps aside, giving way to its dramatic half to take over. The intermission has Madhuravan beg you from walking out. "Wait and See," is printed on screen. Not long after the film resumes, we see the heroine pluck a strand of hair from the hero's head, mix it with water and gulp it down. What does that signify? That she's a fetishist? Sheesh, this is a real snooze. And the music number infestation gives you a damn' headache. Your only option is to sit there pained.

Pandi Oli Perukki Nilayam might not be consistently bathed in sentimentality but the melodrama makes up for its late arrival by being one-hundred-percent trite. The hero is killing the villain (set to a looped track from Apocalypto) and is garlanded by four men whom he once wished were his brothers-in-law. Their garlanding is an act of gratitude for avenging on behalf of their dead sister. ROFL. Madhuravan is fine with being redundant and very comfortable with leaving sentimentality in its crudest state. He also loves pulling your strings as if you were an inanimate object and he, the puppeteer.

I walked out of the theatre feeling the tunes of the corny closing song resonate in my ears, questioning the validity of what I feel- a condescending attack on my intelligence and a successful way to reduce me to an idiot. This is just the kind of wretchedness that I felt last year, after watching Muthukku Muthaaga.