This Nasser and Ashok Selvan-starrer Delights Us With its Culinary Spirit
Theeni
Director: Ani. I. V. Sasi
Forged: Ashok Selvan, Nasser, Nithya Menen, Ritu Varma
Curiously, these movies which arrive with little publicity and noise become surprisingly good, and the Tamil title, Theeni (Meals in Tamil), is one among them. Streaming on Zee5 Cineplex ( one has to pay to look at this), the movie has a novel plot which binds 4 individuals collectively of their ardour for meals.
Written and helmed by Ani. I. V. Sasi, the film opens in London, the place we see a careless Dev (Ashok Selvan), prepared to start out work as a chef in a famend restaurant run by Nasser. He’s a Michelin Chef, and his staffers name him simply Chef. They’re in awe of him and his excellence. He smells every dish earlier than it’s served to clients. If he finds the slightest fault, he bins it. In any other case, simply says “service”. A person of only a few phrases, he leads a lonely life having been separated from his spouse years in the past, who took away their daughter.
It’s into this motley group of Chef, Dev and few others that Tara (Ritu Varma) finds her method to, additionally to work as a chef. She is puzzled by Dev’s clumsiness, which he says is a results of a muscle spasm that he developed after a tragedy in his life.
It’s virtually halfway after we are launched to Nithya Menen’s Maya, a childhood sweetheart of Dev. They’re simply inseparable, and he or she is a supply of monumental encouragement for his culinary abilities that his father strongly disapproves of. Cooking is for girls, the person admonishes, little realising that among the world’s finest cooks are males, and his personal son has an awesome expertise which must be nurtured.
The writing shouldn’t be unhealthy in any respect, although I ponder why one wants a comic book determine (Rajesh essayed by Sathya) in nearly each Tamil movie. However mercifully, his position is small, and the story sticks to the 4 foremost characters. Menen is beautiful as a vivacious lass, whose vitality sparkles radiating in her sweetheart’s life. Whereas Nasser is gripping as a person pining for a daughter lengthy gone (he even names his restaurant after her), Selvan and Varma are passe. Tara’s Oppressive Compulsive Dysfunction (OCD) and Dev’s spasms typically seem exaggerated and have little so as to add to the storyline.
Lastly, will we see a little bit of the Amitabh Bachchan-starrer Cheeni Kum in Theeni? There are a couple of locations that Nasser’s Chef jogged my memory of B, who can be a well-known chef in a London restaurant. However in any other case, the Tamil work is a delightful try at giving us about two hours of straightforward enjoyable. Well worth the cash.
Score: 2.5/5
(Gautaman Bhaskaran is a film critic and creator of an autobiography of Adoor Gopalakrishnan)
