Lubber Pandhu Review | A Smartly Tweaked Sports Drama With a Variety of Layers

The reason why Lubber Pandhu, the latest Tamil sports drama directed by Tamizharasan Pachamuthu, feels so exciting is because it has a packed feeling in terms of layers of drama. The most prominent layer is the ego between the two main characters, played by Harish Kalyan and Attakathi Dinesh. But Tamizharasan Pachamuthu and his writers manage to add layers of relationship drama, understanding, and inclusivity into an idea that is ultimately a sports drama. With all these elements culminating smoothly in the end, Lubber Pandhu is a pleasant film that doesn’t want to follow any template.

Mild Spoilers Ahead! Anbu and Gethu are the main characters, and they both are cricketers. Gethu’s wife doesn’t like him playing cricket, and he always goes to matches without her knowledge. Anbu, on the other hand, is in love with Gethu’s daughter, but he has a rough equation with Gethu on the field. How this equation between Gethu and Anbu causes issues in the lives of all these people is what we see in Lubber Pandhu.

As I said, the movie is not confining itself to a mere ego fight. The solo journey of these characters also has a depth that makes them rooted individuals. It is very interesting how Tamizharasan Pachamuthu tightens the ego tussle very organically through believable instances of verbal spats. You would definitely predict that these two going against each other would be the interval punch of the movie. Tamizharasan Pachamuthu surprises you here by putting both men in a tough spot where they have to choose their true love, cricket or family? In the second half of the movie, this conflict offers them a lot of space to play with humor, motivational dramatic elevation, and a subtle and practical layer of caste politics.

When you watch the trailer of the film, you will get a feeling that the movie has similar beats to the recent film Blue Star. While Blue Star had a very evident political layer, Lubber Pandhu at no point feels like a movie that was designed around politics. In a way, it is a solid example of how one should package a political film in the most entertaining manner. Some of the partially comical scenes, like the one where Balasaravanan’s character explains to Kaali Venkat the difference between considering someone a brother versus considering them as a brother-like figure, are the moments that make this movie political, and it gels smoothly with the overall tonality of the film. I don’t wish to spoil it for you. But instead of taking the predictable path that will show us a sports version of Ayyappanum Koshiyum, Tamizharasan Pachamuthu opts to include every other character we have seen till that point to create various subplots in the movie, and they all get closure by the time we reach the climax.

The tanned Harish Kalyan has maintained a sensible pitch for his hyper-sensitive character. Be it in the romantic bits, the egoistic areas, or even the conflicted one in which we see him in the second half, his acting never becomes loud. Attakathi Dinesh, on the other hand, looks extremely convincing as Gethu. Gethu has an inherent numbness in his face, and the only moment where Gethu loses it is the moment when his wife comes back, and the performance in that scene looks so real. Swasika gets a meaty role paired with Dinesh. While she cracked the body language of her character very convincingly, the dubbing enhances the rootedness of the character. Vadhandhi fame Sanjana Krishnamoorthy was really good as the chirpy lover of Anbu, who has more clarity than her mother. Bala Saravanan was really good at delivering those comical lines.

Lubber Pandhu, at its core, is a sports drama about the rise of an underdog team. But it also makes sure that it doesn’t follow a template. By adding the backstories of the main characters and placing them both on the same side in the final act, the film manages to look different from the usual pattern we see in this kind of film. There is a small yet beautiful scene in the movie where Anbu questions his friend, who was vocal about caste-based inequality but acted patriarchal when it came to gender-based inequality. By making smart and effective tweaks to an existing template, Lubber Pandh manages to cover a lot of perspectives in a very entertaining format.