Vaathi Movie Review

National award-winning actor Dhanush is back with yet another content-driven film titled ‘Vaathi’, which is simultaneously made and released in Telugu as ‘Sir’. Written and directed by Venky Atluri, the film is produced by Sithara Entertainments in association with Fortune Four Cinemas.

When a bunch of students accidently play a VHS cassette, they find a teacher’s tutorial of mathematics, which leaves them surprised. They embark on a journey to meet the teacher, and come across the District collector (Sumanth), who narrates the story of his teacher, a miracle-worker named Balamurugan (Dhanush), who changed their course of life with his Midas-touch.

Stepping into the zone of pros, Dhanush is the showstopper out here. He has inhaled the essence of this role with heart-and-soul and has delivered a neat performance. Any other actor in this character would have ruined the show. It’s because, Venky Atluri’s writing is just passable, and many scenes look stagnated, and there is no proper flow as well. If not for the screen presence of Dhanush, it would have turned out to be too mediocre. The film has a promising bunch of actors including Samyuktha, Ken Karunas and Samuthirakani. Despite having these gems of performers, the characterizations look too feeble. Say for instance, Samyuktha doesn’t have any prominence, other than falling in love with the protagonist. Samuthirakani as usual gives a good performance. With the film’s setting and star-cast from the Telugu industry dominating the screen, we get a feel of watching a Telugu dubbed movie. After Dhanush, it’s GV Prakash Kumar, who strives to escalate the scenes with his musical score. In fact, there are many places, where the screenwriting looks tedious, but he tries to embellish them with his BGM. It’s a disappointment when it comes to songs as the Dhanush-GV Prakash duo has generated innumerable chartbuster hits in the past. Except for the song ‘Vaa Vaathi’, rest of the songs look just middling.

Overall, Vaathi has a good theme and message for the audiences that emphasizes the importance of education, but with a proper execution, and giving a Tamil native touch, would have made it look more engaging.