If you look at the trailer of the film Vaazha, the impression it will give you is that it is going to be this blind worshipping of the backbenchers simply to get the claps of those young folks who are perhaps in their late 20s. But this movie, written by Vipin Das and directed by Anand Menen, somewhere succeeds in going beyond the celebration of the stupidities of boyhood and brushes upon certain sensitive areas that the status quo masculinity forces the men to hide. With the influencer gang giving life to those characters effortlessly, Vaazha scores big on the relatability front.
The film is basically about these five boys, Ajo, Vishnu, Moosa, Abdul Kalam and Vivek Anand. All of them aren’t that great at learning, and some of them have tried and failed miserably at being studious. The challenges in the lives of these folks at various stages of their life up to their late twenties are what we see in Anand Menen’s Vaazha.
The packaging of this movie is done in a way that it will work as a gallery pleaser. From the cliched boys’ life miseries to the least discussed ones, Vipin Das’ script manages to go through a lot of topics within two hours. As I already said, what makes the movie consistently engaging is the relatability, and the over-the-top nature of the film allows Vipin Das to question some of the arguments and burdens men couldn’t really ask back when it was thrown at them. It is the biopic of a billion boys, and hence, female characters are mostly seen as untrustworthy or unattainable from the POV of these boys. The good thing was that Vipin was not making those scenes misogynistic by shaming the females, and it was more like exposing the shallow understanding of men. The scene where a drunken Ajo talks in front of the father of the girl he liked was emotional and, at the same time, hilarious.
Anand Menen, who previously made Gauthamante Radham, is making sure the energy in the narrative is never really lost, and the writing is coming up with ingredients that will evoke nostalgia. The only area that felt slightly weak was the interval block, and they sort of managed to boost it up with a special appearance. There are many match cuts and action cuts used in the movie. From showing the characters’ growth in the earlier portions to energizing the college fight sequence, the cuts really enhance the film’s liveliness. In the final stage of the story, where the struggle is somewhat at its peak, and we see the fathers finally starting to show some faith in the boys, the edits enhance the drama gradually through intercuts. Anand Menen never pushes that drama to a cheesy level, and the chatty single-screen audience with whom I saw the late-night show remained silent in those portions.
Amith Mohan Rajeswari plays the role of the naive one who desperately wants to be good at studies and just can’t do it. The performance in those vulnerable bits, especially the last patch of the film, looked really solid. Siju Sunny, on the other hand, is scoring through his typical style of humor. Joemon Jyothir, in his signature style, made Moosa a hilarious character. Anuraj OB and Anu play the part of the other two gang members, and Saafboi is the gang’s only rival. The seniors Jagadish, Azees Nedumangad, and Kottayam Nazeer were really good in the emotional patches towards the end, while Noby Marcos scored with his typical humor as a supportive parent. Hashir and the gang are there mostly to increase the volume of the cheers inside the theater.
In one of the interviews, Vipin Das had described Vaazha as the Jaya Jaya Jaya Jaya Hei equivalent of boys. After the initial surge of relatable humor, the movie is shifting towards relatable patches of hopelessness, and it’s not like they are just showing sadness. Themes of empathy, showing faith in someone, and standing up for someone are depicted in a non-cheesy and emotional way while maintaining a layer of humor even in the darkest bits of the film. With relatability and fun going hand in hand, Vaazha works in totality.
Themes of empathy, showing faith in someone, and standing up for someone are depicted in a non-cheesy and emotional way while maintaining a layer of humor even in the darkest bits of the film.
Green: Recommended Content
Orange: The In-Between Ones
Red: Not Recommended
