Dora

Dora, starring Nayanthara isn’t devoid of the Tamil movie clichés we see. The main positive factor in this ghost movie is the freshness you see in the back story of the ghost here. That along with Nayanthara getting a lead role with slow motion walks and hero like charm makes this film a watchable one even after being tedious and not so logically pleasing at many areas.

Pavalakkodi lives with her father Vairakkannu. She has this plan to start a call taxi company and she decides to go for a unique way by choosing a really old car for that business. That car was a haunted one and pretty soon things became very difficult for Pavalakkodi and her father. Who is the ghost, what its agenda is and how Pavalakkodi became the chosen one are what Dora showing us.

The entire first half of the film has this usual exaggerated eccentric comedy kind of thing. You have Pavalakkodi challenging her relatives, taking money from her father’s piggy bank kind of money savings and several other scenes which are these exaggerated jokes. There is a parallel police investigation happening in the film to find out a bunch of criminals. The film has a flawed outlook in the first half and it gets a considerable amount of freshness only in the second half when it tries to dwell in to the Whys and Hows of the haunted car. There also imperfections are definitely there. Nayanthara is trying to do an Anniyan kind of transformation in one scene. An old lady describes the car’s headlight as eyes, front grill as teeth etc. and in the very next scene Vairakkannu is doing an awkward comedy on that. All these sequences aren’t really getting the kind of feel one would expect from such scenes.

Nayanthara is the main protagonist of the film and the film mostly uses that lady superstar image of hers. In one scene her father says that there is nobody in South India better than her, the Anniyan inspired scene I mentioned and occasional slow motion walks etc. makes Dora a Nayanthara film and the actress manages to bring in grace to the role. Thambi Ramaiah always gets these eccentric characters and this time also the over concerned father looks too comical. Harish Uthaman was okay and the main antagonist played by Sulile Kumar speaks Hindi like a Tamil, not a north Indian.

Doss Ramasamy has a peculiar story here that involves revenge and ghosts. By creating connected characters, the plot does make sense. But it is how this skeleton structure of the story is given flesh that disappoints you. There are many overwritten portions in the film that looks irrelevant. The police investigation and the reason we get to see why Pavalakkodi is connected to this issue don’t look that credible. The protagonist uses the car and its ghost’s features to execute certain plans and that part was interesting. The story here isn’t really horrifying. It’s more like a less spooky revenge story. The background score was good. The frames were fine. But the cuts looked dull.

Dora isn’t entirely fresh when you look at the way the story has been treated. Naynathara and the peculiar ghost add an element of excitement to this “could have been better” movie.

Rating: 2.5/5