I wasn’t a big fan of the 2016 film Pichaikkaran starring Vijay Antony in the title role. But the decision to make such a film for the Tamil audience at that point was somewhat understandable. But when it comes to its sequel Pichaikkaran 2, which has Vijay Antony in a double role, producer-writer- director-editor-music director Vijay Antony takes his silly idea way too seriously and delivers a film that might make you interested in a brain transplant.
SPOILER ALERT. Vijay Gurumoorthy is the seventh wealthiest man in India. But the guy obviously had enemies, and his CEO, Aravind, was one among them. Aravind and two others who were close to him had an eye on Vijay’s enormous wealth. To have that, they created a (brilliant) plan; a brain transplant. The plan was to swap the brain of Vijay with an absolute nobody, like a beggar. What we see in the film are the events that happen after the transplant and how this new Vijay with the brain of Pichaikkaran Sathya operates.
If you took the chance and read the above paragraph despite the spoiler alert, let me just clarify that Vijay Antony is the hero of the film and not Sampoornesh Babu. If the movie’s first half blends sentiments with bizarre logic, the second half has too many wild imaginations of how the poor should be treated. If any of you feel that the writing of the Shankar movies, like Muthalvan, Anniyan, etc., is not that great, I would recommend Pichaikkaran 2 for them. When Sathya launches Anti Bikili malls for the poor, the montage that follows is supposed to move you emotionally. But this wannabe Shankar sequence with crass visual effects is so bad that I wanted to check whether Vijay Antony has recently joined any mainstream political party.
The movie is a tweaked Robinhood story where the poor in the body of the rich is distributing the excess money to all the poor people. Showing the 100 lakh crores worth of richness of Vijay Gurumurthy needs some scale. But it seems like in his home production Vijay Antony was reluctant to use both craft and money. The poorly crafted sequences looked tackier with those badly rendered CGI sequences that don’t even get the basic things right. This lecture you get at various points of the movie on how Ambani and Adani should just live a normal life and donate everything they have to needy people has no depth to it. The gallery-pleasing politics of those statements just doesn’t have that emotional connection those Sujatha-written Shankar movies had. The Thangachi Paasam makes a comeback to the mainstream after a small hiatus. Luckily Vijay Antony was not interested in fixing the issues of the farmers.
Vijay Antony, as Sathya, in the climax portions of the movie, is doing the sentimental acting in the most typical Tamil style. As Vijay Gurumurthy, his only task is to look like a cool guy. Dev Gill as Aravind is that usual eccentric villain. John Vijay and Hareesh Peradi give him company in a relatively less abnormal way. Radha Ravi takes the baton of villainhood in the second half. I thought the only purpose of Kavya Thapar was to look hot and sexy in that very first song of the movie. But the character gets some space and meaning towards the end, but only for the last 15 minutes of the movie. Yogi Babu is there to increase the satellite value of the film, and in the scene where the police arrest Sathya, I think Yogi Babu doesn’t even know the scene’s situation.
Watching Pichaikkaran 2, I kind of realized that when you are the hero, producer, director, writer, editor, and music director of a hero-worshipping film, the chances of you losing judgment about what the audience wants are extremely high. With the green screen background and the writing of the movie having similar levels of depth, Pichaikkaran 2 is one movie you should confidently recommend to the people you hate.
With the green screen background and the writing of the movie having similar levels of depth, Pichaikkaran 2 is one movie you should confidently recommend to the people you hate.
Green: Recommended Content
Orange: The In-Between Ones
Red: Not Recommended
