There are very few women directors in Tamil cinema and it is always an encouraging sight to see a woman’s name as the captain of the ship on a movie poster. Madhumitha’s earlier works ‘Vallamai Tharayo’ and ‘Kolakolaiya Munthirika’ were appreciated to a certain extent and the director who has shown so much promise has come up with her third film ‘Moone Moonu Varthai’.
The film begins in a hospital where director K. Bhagyaraj (playing himself) is admitted to a hospital and a youngster Arjun comes to his room as a fan and starts telling him his story. Arjun, who has lost his parents, lives with his doting grandparents (Lakshmi and SPB). He is a totally irresponsible boy who likes to hit the bottle once too often and cannot stay in a job for long. Karna is Arjun’s close friend who is also much the same. On a night when Arjun sleeps over at Karna’s flat he sees a girl Anjali and it is love at first sight. The grandparents decide to teach Arjun (rather too late in the screenplay) to teach him a lesson and they go off to the US giving him only Rupees Five Thousand and also renting the house to someone. A homeless Arjun goes to stay with Karna, who has also lost his job and the two hit upon an idea to start a company called ‘Thadangaluku Varunthugirom’ through which for a fee they would deliver bad news to anyone whom the client hesitates to tell himself. The friends stop a marriage for a client by saying that the bride is in love with someone else and find to their dismay that the girl is Anjali’s sister and the client had lied to them. The rest of the (yawn) story is about how the lovers unite.
Adithi Chengappa as Anjali has a pleasant face and with her apt expressions provides the sole relief for the tormented viewer. Venkatesh Harinathan as Karna is adequate and manages to extract a half smile from the audience in some scenes. Arjun Chidambaram as the main lead seems to be a talented youngster, but he has been allowed to ham it up in most of the scenes which make his efforts go wasted. K. Bhagyaraj as himself and SPB and Lakshmi as the grandparents prove that they are seniors. Other talented performers like M.S.Bhaskar, Robo Shankar, Aarthi Ganesh, Nithin Sathya and SPB are wasted in some of the most boring scenes of the film.
Music Director Karthikeya Murthy is not at all bad in his debut film and the same can be said about the cinematographer Srinivasan Venkatesh whose visuals are uniformly good. Art work by Mani Karthick is worth mentioning and editor Kiran Ganti has been handicapped by a rank bad script. In the opening credits two other persons have been credited for the screenplay along with Madhumitha and it is surprising that three young minds have come up with such an outrageously boring film. The film never takes off and all the twists come at inappropriate times and thereby lose their effectiveness. With a woman at the helm, it is shocking to see alcohol as an integral part of every scene in the film. All we can say to Madhumitha is better luck next time.
Verdict :'Moone Moonu Varthai' is a movie that you can give a miss and the One rating is for the efforts put in by the newcomers (Both the cast and crew) who hopefully get better breaks in the future.
Rating : 1/5
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