Saroja - Good Ride !

Saw Saroja this week end . Quite many reviews have mentioned that this is the dawn of new age cinema . I did'nt think so . Quite a number of movies , probably starting from Madras to pondicherry have come up in this genre. But given the quality drought we had this year , i believe that this is quite true, if you restrict the period to few years.

Like we associate social fantasy themes with shankar , there will be association made with venkat prabhu's film making . We are absolved of not seeing heroics , sugary romances, marathon dialogues, red-eyed villains in this movie - but then venkat prabhu does carry few things from chennai - 28 , like the portions where Premji's attempts to fall into love trap aptly guided by raaja's retro music . But then , this movie is a shathapthi , you don't feel bored. the minute you feel it drags an train-hostess comes to you with some food prepared by yuvan( aptly delivering hit songs) . But then , why do we have hollywood tailored background scores? Sure, it is interesting , different , apt , but as yuvan done it many times, he could have avoided this influence to an extent - especially the piano piece which has become the signature style in almost every hollywood movie when the screen shows images manifesting emotion.


This is the second ride i had this year - the first one is the magnum opus dasavatharam , where i had Kamal Hassan pulling me from my laid pack chair in my office to the theaters twice. Such a thing may not happen with Saroja , its good but not good enough to see it twice.Its not a string of comedy sequences but a string of events tied together with interesting knots(sprinkled with action, comedy ) that does keep you stuck in your seat and not visit the loo !

A caution for Premji amaran - people did see my 29 numbered tooth quite often during the movie , but i would assume that the mass laugh effect did do the trick. I would'nt have enjoyed this much in a home theater. And of course amazing photography and slick editing has become a defacto that you seldom mention it in your review.With most of the scenes shot with lightings that would challenge Maniratnam's past movies , you have to give lot of credit for the color correction and the photography.

Four guys , a dozen henchmen , couple of villains , 1 gal , 2 neutrals - happy to see a movie where the director is the reason for the people to come to theaters. Though the comedy scenes remind you of ch-28, the script is no way related to Venkat prabhu's previous outing . While ch-28 shrinks an year of incidents to 150 minutes, saroja shrinks the events in 2 days to 150 minutes window.

It will be interesting to see what Venkat Prabhu does in his third movie- if premji is cast again, im gonna keep off from the theaters.