Malayalam superstar Mohanlal has been kind enough to do Tamil films whenever he finds a good script and this time he is back with Telugu, Malayalam and Tamil trilingual whose Tamil version has been titled as ‘Namadhu’. The film also has our own Gauthami and the combination of these two highly celebrated and talented actors made ‘Namadhu’ one of the film Tamil movie buffs are eagerly looking forward.
But sadly, writer-director Chandra Sekhar Yeleti’s predictable story and painful narration have let down the confidence of its lead actors Mohanlal and Gauthami or expectations of the audience on ‘Namadhu’.
The story revolves around four different characters in four different situations. Sairam (Mohanlal) is an assistant manager in a departmental store. Gayathri (Gowthami) is a typical middle class housewife struggling with a tight financial situation. Mahitha (Raina Rao) is a kind-hearted school child. Abhiram (Vishwanth Duddumpudi) is a studious and intelligent Engineering student.
An act committed by Sairam out of selfishness results in his colleague getting kidnapped for a huge ransom. He struggles with the pain of guilt and tries to rescue his colleague who has a daughter and wife waiting for him.
Gayathri struggles to make both ends meet and gets insulted by her relatives who are financially well off. She gets into an emotional dilemma when she suddenly gets a lucrative foreign job offer.
Mahitha is affectionate towards a pavement dweller kid and she treats him like a brother. The kid gets kidnapped all of a sudden and she starts searching him.
Abhiram starts losing interest towards studies as he falls for a beautiful girl and becomes heart broken when the girl rejects her.
The rest deals with how the problems of these four people get resolved and in what way the four characters are connected.
In films with multi-narrative format, it is imperative to keeps the audience hooked and interested to know the connection between the different characters, until they are revealed. But in this film any regular movie-goer would easily guess it in a very initial stage despite the scriptwriter’s deliberate attempts to hide that from the audience and retain the suspense (!!!) till the climax.
The script hardly has anything new or interesting and moves on a painfully slow pace. The scant regard to portray the actions and reactions of the characters in a convincing manner is clearly evident.
Adding to these, the film billed as a trilingual actually gives us the feel of watching a dubbed film throughout. This despite the presence of Mohanlal, Gauthami, Urvashi and Nasser and they have dubbed in their own voice. Even these four actors have used Tamil only during the dubbing session- a fact exposed by the lip sync issues.
Texts and name boards appearing in Tamil language and references to Chennai and its localities can be taken as efforts to make it look like a direct Tamil film. But how can we get the ‘original’ feel when Panagal Park and Nanganallur are mentioned in dialogues while Hussain Sagar lake in Hyderabad is shown in the film. We understand these are unavoidable glitches in dubbing films but when you claim to be making a multiple language film you should avoid such location mismatches.
Despite all these flaws, the film has some sparks here and there. The scene between the school girl and a fake astrologer is the best example. There are also some emotional moments with good dialogues which may work well with the family audience. The absence of obscenity, larger than life elements like fights and violence deserves a positive mention.
Mohanlal has not failed a bit in fulfilling the expectations over his acting. Especially in the second half he transforms the pain of guilt to the audience. Gauthami perfectly fits into the character and has given her best in emotional scenes. Urvashi manages to raise a few guffaws while Nasser comes across in a small but dignified character.
There is just one song and even that ends adding to the pacing woes. However, music director Mahesh Shankar makes it up with his rerecording which is apt and impactful in many scenes. Cinematography by Rahul Shrivatsav portrays Hyderabad in a likeable manner.
Verdict - Good performances, touching emotional moments and some good dialogues have been let down by a weak script.
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