Kaavalan

Dileep and Nayantara vs Vijay and Asin – which combo is better? I have not seen a full length Vijay movie before, only bits and pieces or songs from his movies made up my fleeting impressions of Vijay. Now after watching him with Asin in Kaavalan I can see how he is an actor at home in Tamil movie industry and having a producer-director father definitely helps. What really surprises me is this guy trumps Shahrukh Khan at not looking his age. He is playing a dude in early twenties in this movie and he doesn’t look a day older, definitely not 37 - his real age


Kaavalan is a remake of Malayalam movie Bodyguard starring Dileep and Nayantara, directed by Malayalam’s ace director Siddique – formerly of the famous Siddique Lal duo. The success of Bodyguard spawned a slew of remakes in Hindi, Telugu and Tamil. I am glad I watched the Tamil version for Dileep could’ve caused a Repetitive Stress Syndrome to my eye muscles. Though he is overwhelmingly funny, if you have seen one Dileep movie you’ve seen them all.

Asin and Vijay are supported by Vadivelu, RajKiran, Roja, Mithra Kurian and a journal. Kaavalan’s story and execution smells of a movie dressed for success. It is the tried and tested to death formula of Indian movie-dom : guy meets girl in the backdrop of a college or university where they can party their days away wearing outrageously colorful clothes, sing around trees, make room for some villains to create a much needed climax and then guy and girl goes off forever-happy land. Same old comfort movie food in a shiny new package – we starry-eyed Indians always fall for this kind of emotional atyachar.