A bromance that bowls out the plot and everything else
Film: Chennai 28 -II
Director: Venkat Prabhu
Cast: Shiva, Arvind Akash, Jai, Vasanth, Vaibhav, Nitin Satya, Premgi Amaran.
Set against the backdrop of gulley-cricket, friendship and love, it was a film with its refreshing screenplay and narrative style earning both critical and popular acclaim.
And now Chennai-28 (2007) returns with a sequel. A proper follow-up, it tracks the journey of friends when they re-unite after years to solve a friend’s problem. While the film has retained most of its earlier cast, a few new entrants have been included too. Does the sequel match the earlier version in its realistic feel and natural take? It does, partly. At other times it seems like the director was trying hard to recreate the magic. And in situations nearing the closing moments, it becomes a tad messy and predictable. The freshness of the earlier version was missing. Slowly but surely losing his grip on the plot, Prabhu seems to have realised it too as he steers his story to an abrupt ending.
While the earlier version was a Chennai based- plot, this is mostly set in Theni. The film opens with a brief backstory of what had transpired in the lives of the ‘Sharks’ since they last met nine years back. Some are married, a couple of them bachelors still, and one of them absconding. Narrated in typical Venkat Prabhu style, it’s an amusing, cheeky, humorous take on each. Busy with family responsibilities and with cricket far from their minds, it’s the marriage of Raghu (Jai) that brings them together. Travelling from Chennai to Theni, they venture into yet another adventure where cricket again would play a very important role in redeeming their lost image, and where the friendship factor would make its play too.
True to their characters as we had known them, the friends indulge in a night of revelry a few days before Raghu’s wedding and realise too late that they had walked into a trap set for them by a local thug (Vaibhav) who was obsessed with cricket too.
There are numerous characters but each gets space. It’s more of a team effort, the entire cast fitting in. Witty lines rendered with a deadpan face works big time for Shiva here. Premgi is in his elements pepping up the scenario. There are half a dozen female leads, but it being a boys’ day out, the women in this version too are barely visible. While the first part is engaging and racy, the second half is loosely etched and meanders.
Some of the interesting moments include characters on the fringe from the earlier film making appearances here. Like the ‘Rockers’ the one-time rivals of the group returning in a changed avatar. And also the school boys, at whose hands the friends had faced a humiliating defeat in beach cricket. Moments such as these, lend a nostalgic feel to the scenario. The songs seem one too many here. While the group numbers fit well, the dream songs seem to be forced, slackening the pace. A tad too long a viewing at about 154 minutes of running time, it could have been shortened to a crisp length.
Though the film has it’s glitches, it is far better scripted and engaging than some recent films. One of its song tracks “Boys are back...’ aptly describes the sequel. For, with a lot of fun moments and positives going for it, Prabhu and his boys are back with a film that keeps one entertained for the most part.