Vamanam Super Hit - Read Reviews

Vamanan – Polished Remake of ‘Following’

Banner: Dream Valley Corporation

Production: Ravendran

Direction: Ahmed

Star-casts: Jai, Priya, Lakshmi Rai, Raghuman, Sampath, Santhanam, Oorvasi and many others.

Music: Yuvan Shankar Raja

Well much ahead for the first 15mins of this film, I felt so fascinated with the gripping start of tale. A Political murder and a new-fangled camera attached to mini-chopper capturing those shots.

Indeed, I was so enthralled with the very stylish making. But sooner, on the very next moments I had to regret for feeling so-high about Ahmed. Know what? He has so cleverly copycatted the not-so famous Hollywood film ‘Following’ directed by Christopher Nolan. Of course, Christopher Nolan has been a great inspirer for many filmmakers in our Kollywood. Even Murugadoss had polished his ‘Mementoes’ and turned it into Ghajini.

Anand (Jai) with the dreams of becoming a great actor comes to Chennai and dwells in his friend’s place (Santhanam). He falls in love with Divya as he meets her over the railway station and with his friend’s advice of imitating the natural mannerisms of strangers; Anand keeps following a stylish man (Raghuman). Cut to a different track, Vinod an ad filmmaker uses a new-modeled mini-helicopter that works on remote control that has camera attached. Accidentally, the control is lost and camera flies over to a altitude capturing the murder of well-renowned politician (Delhi Ganesh) by Anbu (Sampath).

Vinod is murdered by Anbu’s henchmen and Actress Pooja (Lakshmi Rai) tends to be the next victim. Anand becomes so friendly with Raghuman and he’s none other than an unique burglar who loves breaking into the people’s house and get to know about their privacy. But things turn to be topsy-turvy for Anand when he’s accused of murdering Pooja.

Jai has matured a lot on his performance and has gone ahead in places with the instructions of Ahmad. Priya Anand doesn’t get much scope to showcase her potentials while Lakshmi Rai has done a good job. Raghuman again as a baddie steals the show

and Santhanam adds to the humor quotients. His encounters with Oorvasi are mind-boggling and sense-of-timing is unbeatable. Sampath and Thalaivasal Vijay as usual have done justice to their roles.

Ahmad as mentioned earlier has carefully inherited the narration of ‘Following’ and tried to implement some smart moves during the penultimate sequences.

Musical score by Yuvan is middling and background score offers more to the pace of screenplay. Aravind Krishna’s glossy shots are quite impressive.

‘Vamanan’ is a film you can watch if you aren’t aware about ‘Following’ and it’s a good start by Ahmed.

Verdict: Once and not more than that.

Rediff.com review

Vaamanan is average

Pavithra Srinivasan

July 10, 2009 18:18 IST

Presumably, the title Vaamanan, referring to one of Lord Vishnu's [Images] avatars which has a small boy morphing into a gigantic figure has its implications, and Dream Valley Corporation's latest Tamil movie, directed by I Ahmed has all the technical details perfect: Arvind Krishna's cool camera-work, amazing special effects, a beautiful sand-painting by N Raja and Suraj Kavi's slick editing. It even has Subramaniapuram's Jai in the starring role, among others!

So it should be a dazzling festival of colour, action, plot and romance. It is, sometimes. You only wish it could have been that way for the whole movie.

The first shot of the movie itself sets the tone: a sparkling Pooja (Lakshmi Rai) slips out of the water a la Ursula Andress in a bikini, and the camera dwells lovingly on her for a good few minutes. The excuse is that she's a model, working in an ad film, and it seems to satisfy the front-benchers. Thankfully, thereafter it's back to the story proper, and a good beginning it is, too.

As the eager-beaver youngster Anand who wanders into Chennai for a blazing career in the movies, Jai fits the bill (Thankfully he's devoid of his previous movie's hair, make-up et al, and has taken great pains to change his attitude to suit the character of a rather gullible youngster who's inclined to see the better side of things.).

Then there's Chandru (Santhanam), a TV camera-man who lets Anand stay with him while he looks for opportunities. The two have a whale of a time, squabbling together like angry cats, yet affectionate, for all that. Anand meets Divya (Priya, who has very little to do) at the railway station, and its love at first sight (predictably).

Meantime, there's a parallel track: Pooja and her director Vinodh discover something ominous in their tapes: the secret to the murder of Chief Minister Viduthalai (Delhi [Images] Ganesh) committed in a rather simplistic fashion. But it's something different, you suppose. The Joint Commissioner Kailasam (Thalaivaasal Vijay) is involved, which complicates things.

In the meantime, Anand spends his time ogling at Divya, buttering up her mother (Urvasi, in a hilarious role, after quite a while) and going along with Chandru on his work and meeting John (Rahman), who has a habit of breaking into random houses and getting a kick out of it.

The first half is fun, peppy and quite racy but comes the second half and the script stutters a bit, despite the dialogues of T Senthil and Subramanian. Anand is thrown into murder, mayhem and general messiness, while sweetheart Divya goes from one extreme of utterly disbelieving him, to suddenly doing an about-turn. Logic goes for a toss, and Anand seemingly turns into Superman which is when you begin to lose interest.

Edho Seigirai is melodious in Yuvan's music but he scores better with the background music than with the other songs (people actually walk out when those come up).

Jai would have been even better were he not so self-conscious about his dancing. Why is there no sight of "Ultimate Star" Ajith, when the credits thank him? Vaamanan works a bit, if only for the comic parts, at the slight, genuine suspense elements in the beginning, and the screen-presence of Rahman,Urvasi,Jai and Santhanam.

If only they'd taken up where the script lets off at the intermission, and made it tauter, racier, and with at least a sprinkling of logic.

Rediff Rating: Quite good