Settai Review

For the perfect summer mood, you need cliff hanger T20 cricket matches,  mangoes and a fun film so that you can invade the theatres with your friends, visiting relatives and pesky kids in tow. With Settai you can easily skip the other two. This film is a perfect, stand-alone mood enhancer. UTV's remake of Delhi Belly lives up to all the hype about a roller coaster ride. The film works big time because of the terrific chemistry between Arya and Santhanam, something we saw in Boss Engira Bhaskaran. Premgi is a perfect foil for the other two, and comes up with a restrained but note worthy performance. The three are so good together that Arya's romance with Hansika and Anjali looks as though it needs a dash of spice. But then romance is only a fringe benefit in this comic caper.
 
JK (Arya) is a serious journalist who wants to highlight issues, but his editor cum publisher wants eye ball grabbing entertainment stories. JK's roommate Cheenu (Premgi) is a designer in the same paper.  Nadupakkam Nakki (Santhanam) joins the paper as a gossip columnist and moves in with them in their rundown Matunga flat. Madhu (Hansika Motwani) an air hostess, who is in love with JK unwittingly becomes a courier for diamonds being smuggled by Nasser. She asks JK to pass on the parcel, but he dumps the job on Nakki. But since Santhanam is down with an upset tummy, the job passes on to Cheenu who delivers the diamonds to the hospital lab and the stool sample to the smuggler. Naturally, all hell breaks loose at this point.

The chase begins as the smuggler and his goons try to recover the diamonds which have been sold to a jeweler by the trio. (Anjali) an entertainment reporter is also in love with Arya and gets caught in all the tamasha, which soon turns into a spaghetti western, complete with cops and guns..

Director Kannan has pulled off a rib tickling winner largely due to some good dialogues, and credit is given to Santhanam for the comic part of the script. There are two duets for Arya with the two heroines but there is also that Neethandi number by Premgi dressed in eye popping red. His fans will be happy.

There are other characters as well who make a mark , like the landlord, his brother in law the cop and Sayaji Shinde as the diamond merchant.

At just two hours and five minutes, the film is perfectly packaged, with hardly a dull moment. Anjali has gone for a role that could help shed her stereotyped image of a lower middle class girl. Wish she had paid attention to her clothes as well. Hansika is adequate as the glam quotient. But it is the men who steal the show and provide the laughs. The toilet humour is kept within limits so you can take your uncles, grandmoms and the nephew you are baby sitting.

In short, paisa vasool.