COLOMBO: Enthiran, which started its run in Sri Lanka with an unprecedented flourish, has begun to flag everywhere in the island country, with the film being taken off some theatres in Colombo and Jaffna.
In Colombo, it had opened to full houses in all the four theatres at the Cinecity complex, but only two of these are showing it now, and that too not to full houses.
CULTURAL DISCONNECT
Tamils who saw Enthiran felt that it was an "English" film rather than a "Tamil" film, and the message quickly went across to the rest of the cinegoing public, said S.Thiagarajah, who owns the two theatres in Jaffna which started showing the film.
With falling patronage, the film had been taken off one of his theatres, he said.
Enthiran had failed to culturally connect with the Lankan Tamil audiences. Its new flangled sci-fi theme, treated in the latest Hollywood fashion, did not go down well with the largely traditional Jaffna Tamil audience which craves for Tamil films with known ingredients.
"It was bizarre and boring," said Jaffna resident S.Poopalasingham, who confessed to being addicted to Tamil movies.
Thiagarajah, who is a veteran in the field of film exhibition, said that the audiences in Jaffna missed the comic interludes of a typical Tamil film. Clearly, the absence of the type of humour associated with Goundamani, Senthil and Vadivelu, showed.
NO REPEAT AUDIENCE
The theatre owner attributed the extraordinary intial rush, to the high voltage publicity by the producers, Sun pictures, and the hype over the expensiveness of the film, apart from the fact that the "Super Star" was there with Aishwarya Rai in tow.
But the absence of "repeat audiences" showed that the hype had no lasting value.
"People are not seeing Enthiran for the second time," Thiagarajah said.
The circulation of pirated DVDs, which had arrived in Jaffna from Malaysia within a couple of days of the opening, was another, though much less important reason for poor attendance at the theatres.
ROBOT ALSO FLOPS
Enthiran’s Hindi-version Robot, with English sub-titles, was shown for the first week in the Colombo theatre Savoy. But audiences were "thin", said a theater official.
"The Tamil-speaking population, which adores Rajnikanth, flocked to theatres showing the Tamil version. As regards the Hindi film goers here, Rajni is not one of their favourites," he explained.
Not surprisingly, the Kareena Kapoor-Kajol starrer We are Family, which is running concurrently, is drawing the Hindi film fans.