Aadai Review

Amala Paul's bold act going bare for her role is honestly the selling point of 'Aadai' and does this novel attempt by 'Meyaatha Maan' Rathnakumar satisfy those who have thronged inside the theaters remains to be seen.

Kamini (Amala Paul) is a headstrong girl who chooses what she does right from even changing the name her parents have given her.  She runs a prank show on television along with her colleagues Ramya Subramaniam, Vivek Prasanna, Sarithran and a couple of others.  The television company gets shifted out of its high rise building and the five friends decide to have a mini rave party in the empty office floor that night.  Things go out of hand and Kamini wakes up alone the next morning stark naked and without full memory of the previous night.  What happens next is what the disarrayed screenplay is all about.

Kamini is Amala Paul's career-best and she has pushed the boundaries in every aspect such as nailing live sound, racing a bike like a pro and last but not the least is letting another actress hog the limelight in the climax and score over herself.  Oh and not to forget going naked for a major part of the film sure is a testimony of the passion she has for her craft though whether it is justified in the screenplay is debatable and does not take away any credit from her.   Amala literally and actually steals the scene when she becomes the makeshift newsreader.   Vivek Prasanna is the new chameleon of Tamil cinema and this time he is your regular media guy.  Sarithran, Sri Ranjani, and Ramya Subramaniam are the other actors who shine in their respective roles and the role reversal for Bijili Ramesh is an absolute scream.  The girl who plays the character responsible for the major twist is riveting and her barrage of social messages is delivered with much conviction.

What works best in 'Aadai' is its fresh plot and breaking conventional character traits for females in the regular films.  The first half has a lot of energy and the heroine's character is well built up promising a lot more than what eventually happens.  There is a stoner's point of view sequence which catches the eye and most of the adult jokes work especially the age-old lamp holding maid. The opening scene itself is arresting as the true story of how before the British era women were banned from covering their breasts and how a bold woman Nangeyi fought for her right.  There are hard-hitting messages galore including the evils of prank shows, tik tok,NEET and bold potshots at Kollywoods elite, for example, the Me Too related veteran lyricist and character actor.  The dogs that try to chase Amala when she does come out of the building is a telling symbol of amorous men.

On the downside the screenplay gets stuck after the interval block and Amala's actions after finding herself naked are without any logic.  An ordinary village girl planning and executing a complex plan to get back at the heroine is hard to believe and there are many disjointed fragments of sequences which would interest the new breed of decoders.  Only if you belong to the group who want capital punishment for YouTube pranksters you can connect to the film's core message.  Another reason the film struggles to convey what is set out to (Women have the right to choose their dress and way of life)  is chiefly because of many other unconnected things (NEET, Prank show hosts deserve death sentence, etc) the filmmaker wants to get across.  The body-shaming of the policeman's family defeats the progressiveness the film preaches.

Pradeep Kumar's Oorka band's 'Aadai' songs are energetic and serve their purposes onscreen too but the background score tries to get the audience to feel the emotions that are actually not there.  Vijay Karthik Kannan has shot the nude scenes cleverly and aesthetically.  Shafiq Mohamed Ali has synced the shots in a quirky manner to match the theme of the film.  Rathnakumar certainly deserves praise for attempting something new in Tamil cinema but at the same time the core issue is something that needs to reach a wider audience and he has succeeded in pulling them in. But alas by his complicated telling he has consciously settled for it to be bottlenecked for a niche.

Verdict : Go for it for the extremely laudable effort from Amala Paul and the novel attempt on the whole