Idhayam Murali, Atharvaa’s new film written, directed, and produced by Aakash Baskaran, is a good example of how you maneuver a seemingly outdated, cringe subject and make it a passable entertainer in totality. The movie’s trajectory is almost like Vaaranam Aayiram. While the Gautham Vasudev Menon movie had a holistic approach towards an individual’s overall growth, Aakash Baskaran is keeping it light by simply focusing on an aspect of the character, which is his hesitation to communicate his feelings. With self-aware jokes and treatment tactics happening at regular intervals, Idhayam Murali is an entertainer with forgivable flaws.
Our main man, Idhayam Murali, is on a flight to India from New York, along with his close friends. His wedding is happening within 24 hours, and they are all in a rush. On the flight, they met a guy who understood they were in a hurry. Even though he was reluctant to hear their story, they forced him to listen to Idhayan’s tale. Through that narration, we get to know the roots of Idhayam Murali’s history with romance.
At the beginning of the movie, Aakash Baskaran shows us his ’90s kid nostalgia. And from that itself, we can sort of understand the kind of movies he may have seen growing up. So if you look at the structure of the script, it basically tries to take elements from all those escapist entertainers the ’90s kids used to love. The railway station romance, unrequited tuition class love, teacher crush to Dil Chahta Hai style evolution in friendship, the movie is a package of all those lovely fantasies fed to us by movies. If you try to replicate those things similarly, it will have an outdated feel. I believe Aakash Baskaran and his writers, Ramana Girivasan and Dravid Selvam, were able to manage that issue to an extent using humor.
The core idea of the movie is something many people would find relatable. The insecurity and self-doubt one feels when expressing romantic interest in someone is what drives the film forward. While the juvenile and teenage romance is on the easier side, the story goes into complex spaces as the hero’s age increases. The tricky part for the script is making this indecisive nature of the hero a believable problem. While the interval block heartbreak was something one could empathize with the hero, I was really getting annoyed seeing the developments in the climax where the hero’s uncertain behaviour was happening on a huge scale at many people’s expense. But there is a bit in the movie where Fahadh Faasil is shown smoking a cigarette in a parking lot, and the dialogue in that portion sort of salvages the movie from all the clichés.
There are several commercial compromises that are sort of evident, and looking at the way Gatta Kusthi 2 is being celebrated, the business logic of those inclusions makes sense. There are mentions of MS Dhoni and Chennai Super Kings in the movie, and there is one whole action sequence designed using CSK references. And it was interesting how similar that action block inside the bus looked to yesterday’s I, Nobody. The interval block of the movie is, in a way, a tribute to Atharvaa’s father, Murali, whose famous movie Idhayam is the reference for this film’s title and perhaps the core emotion. The friendship tracks in this film work in the funny bits, while the sentimental ones aren’t that great. Thaman’s music is in sync with the energy the movie wants to impart. To make the New York chapter believable, they have added this illogical News Channel angle in the story, and luckily, the focus never goes there.
Atharvaa, with that intense voice of his, is able to carry the role of Idhayan convincingly. Looking at how this character is designed, I feel the challenge would have been not to make his pattern annoying to the audience. I think Atharvaa was able to keep that indecisive nature of the character away from that annoying zone. Preity Mukhundhan as Sam gets a role that uses both her dancing skills and acting chops to a good extent. Kayadu Lohar’s character is the first mature romantic encounter of our hero. I loved how the closure given to that track had a very practical take on the idea of moving on. Natarajan Subramaniam plays the hero’s uncle character. Thaman was okay as Sachin. Niharika NM, who is paired opposite him, needs to fix her excessive head movements along with Tamil diction. Rakshan, Dravid Selvam, and Parithabangal Sudhakar are part of the cast for a dose of comedy, and they do deliver. Fahadh Faasil is there in a fan-service-like cameo role, and towards the end, I got confused about the age of the characters played by him and Jonita Gandhi.
From childhood nostalgia and teenage romance to the evolution of friendships, Idhayam Murali tries to cover way too many things, and at times it is a little too overwhelming. However, as I said, they are aware of these flaws, and the self-aware jokes are bringing the movie back to an enjoyable zone from the verge of being cheesy. The movie continues while the end credits roll, and there are these funny lines from Rakshan, Dravid, and Sudhakar saying that theaters have turned on the lights, people have started looking for parking coupons, etc. Idhayam Murali is a watchable coming-of-age movie that strictly focuses on breezy romance.
