Down south, a few stars are stars less but god more, for their fans; it’s almost established even in North India. Two days before Petta’s release I walked into a theatre in South Delhi talking in my native language Malayalam to my friend and the security women started speaking amongst themselves, “Their superstar’s movie is out already, it’s supposed to be two days later, na?” or when I finally went for the movie today and the ticket counter person enthusiastically said, “Madam your Thalaivar’s film is super hit, its house full.” An honorary Tamilian and a die-hard fan of the language, all my life, I have always been amused as well been happy when people mistake me for a Tamilian, when I speak or by my looks, which in North India can be confusing, as for many of them STILL, all of South India culminates together in TamilNadu or as the infamous ‘Madrasi’. While that will take much longer to change I am super glad that Thalaivar is making better choices at scripts.
By choosing Kabali and Kaala, he proved how one can still have all the swag of a superstar yet have a script to act upon, except when Shankar decides to mess it all up. 2.0 made me restless about whether such a powerful actor will be reduced to memes and jokes again. But he has given an epic comeback in Petta, thanks to writer & director, Karthik Subbaraj, who gave us hard-hitting movies like Iraivi.
Petta is a well- crafted movie for the star Rajanikanth is, yet managed to give few layers threading between right and wrong to the character, Petta Velan aka Kaali. While I could whistle and clap out for the punch dialogues, some of the plot twists took me by surprise. Karthik’s self-confessed fanboy love for the star is evident throughout the first half but he regains his director self from the intermission and gave us enough to love, laugh and root for.
While Karthik, made it a point to deviate from the regular formulaic pattern in superstar movies, with his plot twists, he didn’t forget to add a few such elements into his story either. Petta has this long list of actors with enough fan love going around within South India like Vijay Sethupathi, Bobby Simha, M. Sasikumar, Simran, Trisha, to name a few and even Nawazuddin Siddiqui to attract the crowd from the North. But sadly, except for Vijay Sethupathi as Jithu, rest of the talents were largely wasted in the movie. In fact, Nawazuddin’s character felt rather comic due to the mismatching dubbing; I would strongly suggest taking some lessons on the importance of finding a perfect dubbing artist for an actor from another language, like how they did for Anurag Kashyap in Imaikka Nodigal. For the music part of it, Anirudh’s background music to the racy numbers like dappan koothu number “Maranna Mass” largely remains on point and is what the movie exactly needs.
Although I haven’t seen one strong women character in his movies after Neelambari from Padayappa in 1999, it was a matter of personal happiness that along with his statement comeback with Kabali in 2016, the women in his movies also had a solid story around them. While Radhika Apte was supremely wasted in Kabali, Sai Dhansika, killed it in her role as a gangster girl and Kabali’s daughter; even in Kaala, while Huma Qureshi was given hardly anything to act upon, the story still had well-drafted characters played by Easwari Rao as Kaala’s wife and Anjali Patil as Puyal.
That’s the only part that disappointed me in Petta; I have no clue why such immensely talented actresses like Simran and Trisha were cast in this movie. Except for Malavika Mohanan as Poongodi, the women in the movie had hardly anything to do.
By now I have made my peace with the fact that, it’s pointless to go for a Rajanikanth, Ajith or SRK movie for that matter, with the hope to critically review them, but just get in for an ultimate fan ride. Being a complete fan of the human being Rajani Sir and a fan of the actor from the movies in the 90s, Petta is that movie which gives us our “Thalaivar” in an avatar we would love to see him in. I would completely request Mr. Shankar to please take some cues from these directors and stop his one toned versions of superstars which is a regular pain he puts actors and their fans through, making them WhatsApp jokes rather than the ‘larger than life’ image he promises. As I previously wrote for Nirmal Sahadev’s Prithviraj starrer “Ranam”, if a superstar movie must be made, then make it this way.
Picture Courtesy: Behindwoods, Top10Cinema
