Sketch

Sketch is like a great example on how to make a film without any idea on how to conclude it. This movie by Vijay Chandar has all the clichés in the world and out of the blue comes a climax message on why we should educate children who are forced to do labor. Even though I wasn’t liking it, I was telling myself “It’s a pongal release, it is supposed to be like that.” But when that climax happened, it looked bizarre rather than giving me a feeling of twist in the tale.

Sketch is our main protagonist. He is like the henchman of a financier. If you fail to pay the monthly due, Sketch will sketch your vehicle and take it back to the financier. At one point Sketch does the same thing to settle the score of an old rivalry between his boss and another goon. The outcomes of that and how Sketch manages to find out who was behind many of the things that happened to him and his friends after that incident is what the film talking about.

A few minutes in to the film, you would understand where this movie is heading for. Hero’s intro, then a song, then he meets the heroine possibly in an argument where she misunderstands him and then heroine understands that hero is a good guy and hero also gets to know that heroine is this epitome of goodness. The last sentence is perhaps the one common thing in almost all of the shoddy commercial films in Tamil. At the end of the film my thought was what prompted Vikram to do this film? Is there anything here for an actor of his caliber to perform? No. Is there a story that needs to be told? No. Does the mass masala factor in this movie is a never before seen thing? No. At a time when Tamil audiences are welcoming films like Vikram Vedha and Theeran Adhigaram Ondru it is heart breaking to see someone like Vikram going after such terrible scripts.

Vijay Chandar, the director of the film has only one agenda of showing back to back heroics. In the first half itself there are a lot of action sequences for the silliest of reasons. Somebody took friend’s girlfriend’s mobile – lets go fight. That guy’s friend comes for another fight – let’s do one more slow motion fight and this goes on. And in between all this there is a romance. The funny thing is that without any genuine emotional attachment happening between the hero and heroine, they are acting like the GVM love birds. There are almost 4 or 5 songs in this movie solely on romance and I wished instead of at least two of them, the director would show us a sensible interesting conversation between the two. After going through a pile of clichés the film enters its zone only in the second half and what seemed like the main conflict had no significance in the end. M Sukumar’s cinematography adds style to slow motion frames. The music and score by Thaman was good, but it is hard to appreciate it as it is inside a mess.

Vikram does have a grace to pull off so called Mass characters and this one that had nothing interesting about it was also done neatly by him. Tamannaah looks more elegant in Saree and her role is basically an Ad for various styles of Sarees. Harish Peradi and Baburaj were fine in their characters. I liked the two actors who did the role of Sketch’s friends along with Sriman. Abhishek is there in a pointless DCP character.

Sketch is trying to be preachy at the end after showing a lot of stuff that are a spectrum apart from that. If seeing Vikram in slow motion is enough for you, try watching 10 Endrathukkulle again. This one is pretty much in that zone.

Rating: 1.5/5