Vaanavarayan Vallavarayan Movie Review

Synopsis: Brothers Vaanavarayan and Vallavarayan share a great bond but Vaanavarayan falls in love with Anjali, who feels that Vallavarayan is the cause for her lover being a wastrel. Will romance cause a split for the brothers?

Movie Review: Vaanavarayan Vallavarayan feels like a different version of the 80s romance drama Chinna Thambi Periya Thambi, going by the initial scenes. We have two brothers who are extremely fond of each other and are a terror to the village folk, especially if anyone talks ill of either of the two. As in that film, the problem arises with the arrival of a girl into their lives, but this is where the movies begin to differ. There, both the brothers fall for the same girl and start fighting, but here, it is Vaanavarayan who falls in love with Anjali, a college student from a neighbouring village. However, the conflict in this film arises because of Vallavarayan, whose unruly behaviour causes problems between both their families. The rest of the plot is all about how the brothers try to win back Anjali.

This is a slightly outdated plot but could still work as a lighthearted entertainer. However, the problem is that director Rajamohan has difficulty in maintaining the right tone. The film often veers between juvenile humour and an anything-goes approach to heavy-duty melodrama that it becomes jarring after a point. The entire first hour is devoted to the silly deeds on Vaanavarayan and Vallavarayan. These include pointless fights between the brothers, scenes featuring their incredibly dim-witted family members (Thambi Ramaiah and Kovai Sarala in their over-the-top mode and a superfluous Sowcar Janaki), and stalking passed-off-as-romance scenes. Some of the jokes are predictable (like the one involving Devadas and Parvathy), some passable (a PJ that puns on the word Pazhani brings a smile) while most (like a spoof of Surya Vamsam) are downright tedious. However, it is the film’s treatment of its female characters that is condemnable. The heroine gets slapped by the hero (to cheers from the audience who do nothing of the sort when a male character is slapped), the grandmother is shown as a promiscuous character, and everything from puberty to period and breasts (this is a U-certified film, by the way) is exploited just for the sake of laughs.

The film later turns into melodrama but does this in awkward fashion. Insults are traded between the two families and the heroine’s father is publicly humiliated but we are never sure how to react to these scenes because the director, eager to keep things light, resorts to humour immediately. As a result, the characters come across as shallow and implausible. Even the performances are middling. Kreshna, who has so far displayed an uncanny knack for choosing interesting films, seems to have selected this one just for the ‘B and C audience’. As for debutante Monal Gajjar, she continues the fine Tamil cinema traditions of an educated heroine falling in love with a loafer and bad lip-syncing. Ma Ka Pa Anand hits some and misses many but Santhanam is funny in the few minutes he is on screen.