Vaaranam Aayiram

What could have been a really nice, heartwarming movie about a father-son relationship has been spoilt because of the smart-ass attitude of the director. What he and most of the Tamil movie directors need to realize is that if you can’t pack a powerful punch of emotions in 2 hours, you can never do it in 3 or 4 hours. It’s like how the Indian team used to claim that having 7 batsmen was going to win them matches, when they made Dravid the scapegoat/wicketkeeper! If you can’t do it with 6 batsmen, then forget it. Bad analogies aside, this movie is the best example of how the second half should not drag. Gowtham did it with Vettaiyaadu Velaiyaadu too.
The first half took me back several years, in fact more than a decade, reminding me of my relationship with my dad. I still remember when my dad took me aside (and away from my mom) and told me “I know you are going around with that girl, but don’t overdo it”. There were a also a lot of funny moments between Surya and Sameera Reddy, the girl he is madly in love with. More than the movie, the people who were sitting behind me were making me laugh out loud. When Sameera Reddy finally accepts that she has fallen in love with Surya, with the Golden Gate bridge as the backdrop, Surya immediately picks up a bunch of very small flowers from the grass and gives it to her. The girl sitting behind me tells her husband, “Paaru, avan evalo romantic-a poo eduthu kudukkaraan, neeyum irukkiye, enakku molaga bajji eduthutu vandhu kuduthe!” Before I could stop laughing, the husband goes, “Beach le bajji dhaane di kedaikkum, adhukku naan enna panradhu?” I felt like I was sitting in Abhirami theater for sometime there! Coming back to the screen that was in front of me, Gowtham definitely knows how to handle the little things between the lead pair without making it look cheesy. I can give him that.
During the second half, I don’t know about the other people in the theater, but my eyes were watering up for sure. WAIT! Before you make any judgments on my sensitivity levels, let me make it perfectly clear that I had tears in my eyes because I was all sleepy and I kept yawning non-stop. If you want to show a man’s journey through his successes and failures in life, you don’t necessarily have to take up half of our lives. Even one of the best movies of the last century, Forrest Gump, which coincidentally (!) deals with a man’s life journey, was only 2 hours and 22 minutes long.
Overall, the movie was good when it took us through the 70’s and the 80’s, started to slow down during the 90’s and finally limped it’s way to the end credits after 2000. Oh yeah, there's also the pathetic attempt at justifying the title at the end, by making Simran explain the meaning of Vaaranam Aayiram!