‘NGK’ lesson: Don’t confuse the audience

Filmmakers and writers have learned a great deal from ‘NGK’.  Don’t confuse the audience or you will suffer.  

The film, directed by Selvaraghavan, is too subtle to a fault.  It has puzzled the audience, even the discerning ones, so much that director Selvaraghavan had to issue a statement saying Suriya’s character is a villain in the second half. He has asked the audience to decode the hotel room scene between NGK and Vanitha (Rakul Preet Singh) to know what is the nature of their relationship.  Decoding?  Well, not many would be ready to take such scenes seriously.  

In our LIVE updates on the movie, we wrote that Nandha Gopalam (Suriya) comes across as a wily politician one moment and a bumbling activist the next. This confusion in the characterization has taken a toll on the movie’s box-office performance in Telugu.  The Telugu audience are not used to subtle narration styles.  On the other hand, the Tamil audience have traditionally embraced films that don’t spoon-feed the audience.  

The Telugu version of ‘NGK’ is reportedly heading for a flop.  Its first weekend’s collections are pegged at Rs 3.20 Cr (Share).  It has to make Rs 9 Cr to achieve break-even.