Idhu Namma Aalu (2016)

The biggest strength of Idhu Namma Aalu is its leads — Simbu and Nayanthara. It is canny stunt casting, and this is one of the few things that director Pandiraj has gotten right in this film. The audience know that they share a history, and Pandiraj uses this fact and tries to spin a romance around this. The actors play Siva (Simbu) and Myla (Nayanthara), who have grown up in a small town but have moved to Chennai for work. Siva's father (Jayaprakash) arranges for him to marry Myla, and he, too, falls in love when he sees her. But Myla knows that he was once in a relationship with her friend Priya (Andrea, whose only cue seems to have been: keep smiling). Will this make her reject him?

The problem with Idhu Namma Aalu is that Pandiraj seems to have gotten content with his leads that he fails to create an engaging story around them. Every moment feels stretched beyond its welcome, and there are many scenes where we can sense that the director is trying too hard to make them seem cute (Simbu calling his dad 'buddy', the lovers calling each other as kuttima and ammu, which starts to grate after a point) and hep (every time a character dials someone, a dialler screen pops up on the side of the screen!). Scene after scene and dialogue after dialogue keep reminding us that we are seeing Simbu and Nayanthara on screen by referring to their once-upon-a-time relationship, and Simbu's quirks — his playboy image, his knack towards getting into controversies, and even his worship for Ajith. After a point we stop seeing them as Siva and Myla and so never really care for the characters.

Of course, this approach works sometimes. Pandiraj can still write catchy dialogues, and his one-liners for Soori keep us cracking up now and then. He is also smart enough to make this much-delayed film seem current by using lines and songs from recent films like Theri and Vedalam in the background. And Simbu, too, gamely lets everyone take a dig at his real-life and tries to liven up things. But is that enough? There is a sudden conflict introduced in the end so that the movie can reach its climax and it is laughably bad even for a film that is this fluffy that we can only cringe at the lack of imagination. From once being considered as a promising new-age director, Pandiraj has turned into a filmmaker who so badly wants the audience to love his film that he has started to readily give them what they want, even if means doing something that is routine. But what is worrying is will he be able to change track or has he gone too far?