Thodari

Thodari from Prabhu Solomon has a running time of 168 minutes. That is roughly three hours inside the theater considering the interval. And imagine the kind of frustration you feel when almost half of that time is spent over irrelevant areas. Thodari is absolute chaos of many subplots just intended to make it look like a thriller. With comedy and songs popping out at certain bizarre points of the movie, this “serious” thriller may ultimately give you moments of laughter.

Interestingly my summary of the movie would start from the second half of the film as the first half is largely a pointless portion created only to accommodate the unavoidable Tamil movie ingredients like Love songs and comedy scenes. Poochiyappan works in the Pantry car of the train. He apparently falls in love with a girl in the same train who was accompanying a celebrity. As the movie approaches its half way point, a series of events ends up in a scenario where the train is moving at an alarmingly high speed without loco pilot. How the collective effort of authorities and our main protagonists resulted in a happy ending is what Thodari dealing with.

I wont say it’s a rip off of 2010 movie Unstoppable as it would be an insult to that well made sensible thriller. Prabhu Solomon grabs the idea of that movie and places it in the environment of a typical hero worshipping sort of Tamil movie. Let me tell you a scene towards the ending of Thodari. Our heroine is sitting near the engine of the train and hero is on top of the compartment next to the engine. After the train going through a risky bridge cross, she fears that he is dead and when ultimately she sees him again on the same place, Tada! Let’s start a song there and to increase the sensibility of that “wonderful” scene, you have a very lean hero dancing on top of a train which has been going at a speed of 120-150 kmph for the last few hours.

It is really shocking to see such a director losing the sense completely. The film has too many sequences where people are walking on top of the train as if they are walking on their home’s terrace. The first half of the movie looks really pointless. I still don’t understand the necessity of having that character played by Kishore. The Thambi Ramaiah jokes are seriously misplaced. There is no depth to the romance between the main protagonists. There was a sequence in this film where Keerthy Suresh imagines about her career as a singer and while watching that montage I was like “somebody please tell this director to stop imagining”. Editor’s main job in this movie was to trim the movie and he hasn’t done that and there were numerous places that didn’t have scene continuity. Even though the scenes were a misfit, some of the sequences that teased the “sensation” seeking media were kind of good. The lists of stupid things you see on screen in this movie are countless. Visual effects are pretty average. I liked that Pona Usiru song, but the placing of that song was horrendous.

Dhanush in his typical don’t care style is kind of okay for the role of Poochiyappan. Rest of the entire cast in a way overacts. Keerthy Suresh’s character in the movie was of an innocent girl and she made her look like an idiot. Thambi Ramaiah has overacted, but can’t be really blamed as it was what the movie demanded from him. Kishore’s character’s short temperedness looks really funny on screen.

Thodari is a poorly researched movie with zero charm to its credit. The director gives zero respect to the seriousness of the situation. For nearly three hours inside a theater, this movie is indeed a torture. Not recommended!

Rating : 1.5/5