Thozha

Based on the 2011 French film The Intouchables, Thozha from director Vamsi Paidipally is a mixed bag that on the whole is a pleasing one as it doesn’t try to make situations that much complicated emotionally. The filmy selfless heroism is definitely cheesy and at times looks too much, but the less exaggerated characterization and the overall feel good nature of the film makes it a cheerful simple cinema.

Vikramaditya is a multimillionaire and in a paragliding accident that happened five years ago, his body got paralyzed. He was in search of a caregiver and the search ends up in this wreck less young fellow Seenu who just want to get a good certificate to impress the court to reduce his sentence. How the relationship between these two grows and how that changes the life of both is what the movie talking about.

The buddy movie doesn’t really try to experiment with the screenplay from the original. The same flashback approach of the original is being followed here. May be because of the mass appeal factor, the Nagarjuna character is single and the first love of his life is alive in this version of Intouchables. The screenplay has this extended melodramatic sequences revolving around Seenu’s family equation and there is this whole new Paris episode which I think was not there in the original one. The unavoidable romance track was there between Karthi and Tamannah and to my surprise it wasn’t that annoying and doesn’t really feel like a parallel track.

Vamsi Paidipally makes the movie more of an Indian one with the sort of theatricality we expect. But as I mentioned there is no heavy complications given to the story.  The easy going characters and the light hearted tone given to almost all situations makes the movie that feel good one we enjoy. To my surprise there isn’t any over the top action/song heroics in the movie as it has two stars who are worthy of that.  The dialogues work nicely on the humor side. Screenplay is a little bit excessive. Music was okay and the BGM was slightly on the higher side. Cinematography was good.

Nagarjuna as the constrained Vikramaditya was fine. Karthi in his typical careless style handles the character nicely and offers a good performance. It has been a while I got a chance to appreciate Tamannah. The gorgeous lady acts fine and her chemistry with Karthi is quite pleasing. Prakash Raj, Kalpana, Jayasudha, Vivek and a few more including two cameos are there in the cast and all were good in their respective roles.

On the whole Thozha (Oopri) is that jolly good type friendship movie which isn’t that emotionally moving, but has the grace of coolness of characters and the overall light hearted cinematic way of spreading feel goodness. They could have reduced the length a little bit.