‘Vaathi’ movie review: Dhanush can’t save this middling education drama that kills its own potential – The Hindu

Minutes into Venky Atluri’s Vaathi (or SIR in Telugu), you discover a sample, the shadow of which travels all through the movie. Venky begins the story in a nonchalant, sobering vogue. In 2022, three boys uncover a field of video cassettes. They play the video and we see the again of a instructor writing some trigonometry sums on a blackboard. It’s Dhanush (after all) and he even turns in direction of the digital camera for a quick half-second. The coveted mass introduction shot goes poof. Does half a second rely? The thriller of the cassettes takes the boys to a District Collector’s workplace, and Venky as soon as once more reveals Dhanush, wanting straight at us from an image on the wall.

If the intro is so sobering and intriguing, Venky’s informal use of songs within the first half additionally carries this subdued power, and the prospect of a complete movie in the identical mould excite. The fantastic dancer in Dhanush takes a step again when there isn’t any set-up for the primary music; he walks down a road and shakes a leg casually with no discover. And in the midst of Vaa Vaathi, a romantic monitor, Venky tells one thing heavy, of how a faculty turns into a temple for the marginalised communities who will not be allowed inside temples. These are unbelievable concepts.

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However that is solely half of the sample; sadly, Vaathi is stuffed with one-off concepts that instantly discover their evil twin. That’s, the movie retains subtracting itself by including issues unnecessarily. The restraint within the introduction photographs, as an illustration — an enormous title card for Dhanush seems the third time we see him, however the second for it has handed. Equally, the usage of GV Prakash’s sensible scores feels uneven.

The setting of the movie is the ‘90s in a city referred to as Sozhavaram on the Tamil Nadu-Andhra Pradesh border. Dhanush’s character Balamurugan, an assistant instructor at a non-public faculty referred to as Thirupathi Teaching Centre, is distributed as a full-time arithmetic instructor to a authorities faculty in Sozhavaram, due to the federal government’s cope with TCC’s head Srinivasa Thirupathi (Samuthirakani). Thirupathi, nonetheless, has his personal agenda; sending these “third-grade” academics to authorities faculties is to make sure that his personal college students come on high.

However Balamurugan naturally has a noble mission, which begins by making certain the scholars attend courses, then bringing them collectively, and ganging up towards Thirupathi. Now, the geographical and interval settings positively assist — the dearth of communication gadgets, trendy modes of transport, and the web are needed to inform this story — and setting it in a border city helps this Tamil-Telugu bilingual movie. Nonetheless, the movie stops establishing the appear and feel of the interval quickly, and there are horrible lip-syncs in scenes.

Vaathi is a movie by which the hero finds small means to win large, however the undemanding screenplay presents only some pay-offs even when some moments are arrange effectively. Equally, the screenplay wants extra scenes just like the one the place Bala explains the futility of caste and the classroom turns into a miniature of society; extra of this, and we may have gotten one thing akin to the 2007 American movie Freedom Writers.

The movie can be stuffed with unidimensional characters that confirmed potential initially. The characters performed by Tanikella Bharani and Hareesh Peradi discover no worth within the story. Whereas Ken Karunas’s Muthu finds himself in some fascinating areas within the screenplay, Samyuktha’s Meenakshi is rendered deadweight. Coming to the star on the centre of all of it, you solely really feel unhealthy for Dhanush as a result of he does attempt to single-handedly help the movie even in its middling parts. Sadly, there is not sufficient on paper to assist him.

At one second, director Venky goes meta to say that even a cinema theatre can impart training if wanted, and his noble message within the movie is loud and clear. You solely want the screenplay was as sharp because the tip of Dhanush’s fountain pen and as swerved as his folded half-sleeves.

Vaathi (or SIR) is at the moment working in theatres

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