Tamizh padam Review

“Tamizh Padam” was promoted as one of its kind, a full length spoof movie first time in Tamil cinema. The posters where Shiva were seen donning the attire of the heroes of so many well known movies raised the expectations for the movie. I had my won apprehensions. Spoofs primarily work brilliantly well as a short or even as a series (Lollu Sabha) but as a movie it might be too stretched and would fizzle out (Quick Gun Murugan a classic example for this).

So how well does this movie turn out. Sadly the movie suffers the same problem of being too long for a spoof. Half an hour into the second half we slowly get a sense of restlessness. Another reason for that might be because of the fact that it has smashing first. The first half is a complete laugh riot. They have made fun of everyone and everything related to cinema. The absolute ridiculous self praising opening songs, gravity defying stunts, crappy punch dialogues, a nobody turning into a successful person just over a song, sentimental soppy sequences and we even have a ridiculous climax twist and the list is endless. All this and so many other clichés have been ridiculed. The first half is primarily several sequences lifted from many famous movies and it is a joy to any Tamil movie buff. The dialogues where so hilarious in these parts. The one involving Kandasamy cracked me the most. Absolutely brilliant.

As much as the first half is so full of industry in jokes and spoofs, the second half is filled with silly jokes and gags and not an imitation of any other famous movie. This was puzzling as it was a huge let down which turns the second half into a very boring stretch with few bright moments (like that English film song - top notch). As a result the movie looks really stretched and we end up exhausted when the film finally ends. For a team which has put it in so much efforts to be different and funny ( right from the title cards, end credits, song lyrics all seem to be carefully rolled out to mock our filmy clichés )they seem to have missed the trick in the second half.

But one trick where they hit the jackpot was in casting Shiva as the lead. He is so tailor made for the role, can’t imagine anyone else who could have suited this role better. It’s hard not to like him. Nevertheless the entire team has to be appreciated for trying out something like this in Tamil cinema even if they have only partially succeeded in what they had promised to deliver.