Namma Veettu Pillai

Kadaikutty Singam that came last year from Pandiraj was a massive commercial success despite being an extremely old school family drama. I personally haven’t enjoyed that film at all and for me, Namma Veettu Pillai from Pandiraj was just one more Xerox copy of Kadaikutty Singam. With so many characters and cheesy melodrama happening frequently on the screen, Namma Veettu Pillai is strictly for those who have an opinion that movies like Kadaikutty Singam are not dated.

Arumponn, is our hero. He is a part of a big family who has certain issues with each other. But Arumponn is a big-hearted guy who neglects these negatives and always tries to maintain harmony among the family. Arumponn’s sister Thulasi is extremely dear to him. Her marriage was always his priority. The problems that unfold after the marriage of his sister and how Arumponn manages to tackle all those issues are what the story of Namma Veettu Pillai showcasing.

One can easily assume what would have been the pitch of Sun pictures to Pandiraj. We need another version of Kadaikutty Singam. And Pandiraj simply changed the character names and tweaked a little here and there and created Namma Veettu Pillai. You can find an equivalent character of the Karthi movie in this Sivakarthikeyan family drama. The core is still the same where a hero is trying to make the dysfunctional joint family understand the importance of their unity. The only visible change is that Pandiraj has added this Annan- Thankachi track which the director can claim as a “difference” from his last year endeavor. But that too has a very cheesy outline and Pandiraj himself tries to spoof it on many occasions.

Sivakarthikeyan is in his safe zone in terms of character and does a fairly neat job. Aishwarya Rajesh as the grounded and rooted Thulasi was also impressive. In fact, the duo as brother and sister has done a neat enough job to reduce the melodrama in many areas. Bharathiraja plays the role of the elderly person in the family and he was perhaps the only one whose decibel was comfortable for the ears. Natarajan Subramaniam was fine in being the negative shaded Ayyanar. Soori chips in with his usual style comedy, luckily less eccentric this time. Anu Emmanuel is the must-have fair-skinned heroine of this typical Tamil family drama. The elaborate cast of the movie has almost an entire association of supporting actors and they were all pretty much on the high pitch.

There are moments in the movie where you can clearly sense that Pandiraj himself knows he is not creating something new. Just after a really cheesy and stretched brother-sister sequence in the interval portion we could see another character making fun of it in a spoof-like manner. In the beginning, there is a brother-sister song that tries to project an image that this movie won’t be highly melodramatic, but where the film lands eventually are as cheesy as those old school movies. Apart from the farmer versus corporate subplot, everything else that is essential in the modern-day commercial format of mass entertainers is there packaged forcefully in this movie. There is a whole scene with sickening jokes just to know whether Arumponn’s mother may have heard a comment they made. Ayyanar’s master plan to retain the employees in his uncle’s factory is even more bizarre. Anu Emmanuel’s Maangani as an IAS aspirant is as believable as Sayyesha as PM’s private secretary in Kaappaan. Nirav Shah has made sure that the frames are filled with colors even if the scene is sad. D Imman’s typical music is perfect for the setting of this movie.

Namma Veettu Pillai is for those who feel that those outdated dramas with bumper sticker dialogues and least subtle presentation of family bonding are still fresh. If movies were people, Kadaikutty Singam and Namma Veettu Pillai will be siblings.

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