Maanaadu Movie Review

There’s a well-established theory in the school of filmmaking – The fate of a movie is decided on the script and the editing table. Even the most ordinary stories have managed to pull it off with excellent results with perfect writing and editing. But what makes ‘Maanaadu’ so special is that, it owns is, that it has lots of layers in the story, which comes encompassed with brilliant screenplay by Venkat Prabhu and commendable editing by Praveen KL. These two technicians become the foundation stones of this film, which furthermore gets embellished with colossal elements. There’s another theory, this time, with the thriller genre. The protagonist is weak to the core during major portions, and its antagonist, who keeps ruling the show from beginning to the penultimate moments. Obviously, this is a timeworn concept in any cinema beyond linguistic barriers and boundaries. Apparently, we find Silambarasan giving a tailor-made act befitting this concept.

His characterization is more inclined to the emotional aspects, and hence, there isn’t a single punch line or mass visual shots to empower his heroism. On the other end, SJ Suryah enjoys all these privileges of having a voguish BGM, the swag action of smoking cigarettes, and of course, bringing back his trademark act of hyper-activeness that leaves audiences split into laughter. To be precise, 90% of the second half is carried on the shoulders of SJ Suryah, or else the movie would have caused a sort of boredom midway. Having used the term ‘Boredom’ doesn’t mean that the writing is fallible, but the basic genre itself is challenging, where movies of such paradigms have a compact and little running length. However, Venkat Prabhu has taken scrutinizing efforts in handling these challenges, by bringing SJ Suryah in front seat. The last 30 minutes comprises absolute raciness. If you’re looking out for one best cherry-pick, the sequence involving Silambarasan, SJ Suryah and Y.Gee Mahendran will leave you totally in laughter-riot. Yuvan Shankar Raja pumps up the energy with the background score. One of the greatest highlight is that Maanaadu is the first-ever movie in the combination of Silambarasan-Yuvan, Yuvan-Venkat Prabhu to have a single song, and yet engage the audiences greatly. The others in the star-cast have given a decent performance although their role is minimal.

On the whole, Maanaadu has a time loop concept, and it is very explained by Kalyani Priyadarshan’s character about Ujjain and the mythological concept of Time Loop involved, which significantly is linked to the protagonist’s back story. Venkat Prabhu proves to be a top-notch director with Maanaadu, and this is a movie that will be praised beyond boundaries and linguistic factors.