The duo of Arjun Prabhakaran and Gokul Ramakrishnan has been making movies for almost 8 years now. But the disappointing thing about their films is that they still haven’t come out of that amateurish filmmaking space. They always have a theme, but when it comes to writing and execution, the melodrama in the content makes their films tedious. Their new venture, Thaaram Theertha Koodaram, directed by Gokul and co-written by Arjun, is also in the same patience-testing melodramatic space.
Sanjay, a young man who has bipolar disorder, is our central character. His family never really understood his emotional issues, and the guy wanted to live alone. He stayed away from home in a lodge by earning a living through food delivery. In the film, we see the changes that happened in his life when he met a girl named Idhaya in the same lodge who was tackling various financial issues on her own.
Thaaram Theertha Koodaram starts off with a very vague exposition about the characters that makes you clueless rather than curious. The very first scene in the movie and the interval block clearly give you an idea about the story’s trajectory. But the execution of that predictable phase is unbearably sentimental, and I saw the guy sitting two rows before me deciding to play online rummy rather than watching the melodrama. It seems like, in their heads, Arjun and Gokul have conceived this as their version of something like Shoojit Sircar’s October. And they bombarded the movie’s last act with music to make us reach for tissues. But sadly, the only thing I was looking for was a cup of coffee or any topical ointment.
Karthik Ramakrishnan, who plays the role of Sanjay, is making the character far too naive. A performance like that, clubbed with overtly theatrical dialogues, just makes the scene difficult to sit through. Nainita Maria as Idhaya was okay. Since her character isn’t that animated emotionally, the performance was a non-challenging one. James Elia as the lodge owner, is the only other actor with a lengthy role in the film, along with that little kid who played the character of Chiku. Vineeth Vishwam, Maala Parvathy, and Shankar Ramakrishnan are also part of the movie in cameo-like roles.
There is this very forceful sluggishness in the making of the movie that takes out the conviction. There is a scene at the beginning where Sanjay is running after a police officer to bribe him, and I still don’t understand the purpose of that sequence. The hide n seek in the lodge episode, the way the hero and heroine initially communicate, etc., all have this odd feeling that doesn’t look plausible. The escalation of the relationship to a very intimate level is also way too swift. Thus some of the “poetic” dialogues about each other’s dreams sound very corny. The OST and the songs from Mejo Joseph sounded good as a solo album. But in the film, it had this overdone and loud feel.
Thaaram Theertha Koodaram is a wannabe emotional drama about the partnership of two young souls with similar feathers. But with clunky writing full of cheesy moments that the main cast can’t pull off convincingly, this film from Gokul Ramakrishnan shows very minimal improvement from the other movies from the same team.
With clunky writing full of cheesy moments that the main cast can't pull off convincingly, this film from Gokul Ramakrishnan shows very minimal improvement from the other movies from the same team.
Green: Recommended Content
Orange: The In-Between Ones
Red: Not Recommended
