BANGALORE: Following the long list of movies 'adapting' titles of yesteryear flicks is Dhanush's Uthamaputhiran, a remake of the Telugu film Ready. The actor-director duo of Dhanush and Mithran R Jawahar, who had earlier produced Yaaradi Nee Mohini and Kutty, have gone all out to create a movie that has its 'commercial' priorities well set.
Uthamaputhiran begins with Siva (Dhanush) and his friends kidnapping a bride, who happens to love one of them. However, a mix-up leads to the kidnapping of the wrong girl, Pooja (Genelia). An army of henchmen are sent out to bring her back, however, which Siva manages to evade.
It transpires that Pooja, the heir to a large fortune in the US, was about to enter into forced wedlock. Siva then urges her to stay in his house under a different alibi (Ghilli, anyone?).
As custom dictates, Pooja (who does an amazing couture somersault by appearing in mini-skirts in songs and in demure sarees otherwise), wins over Siva's household with her 'homely' tendencies and affable behaviour, with the elders deciding that the match between Siva and Pooja be fixed. One day, Pooja encounters her erstwhile family on the road all alone, and is taken back home.
Enter 'Emotional Ekambaram' (Vivek), an accountant to two of the biggest families in Pooja's village — Periayya (Ashish Vidyarthi) and his sibling Chinnaiah. Siva joins Ekambaram as his assistant and gains access to the two households incognito. The rest of the movie is about the two lovers uniting, with advice on family values being doled out by the bucketful. A drab first-half notwithstanding (you'd be forgiven if you viewed certain sections and identified it is a family soap), Vivek manages the second-half for easy viewing by bringing down the roof with his histrionics.
rajagopalan.v@expressbuzz.com