If you’re a fan of Tamil cinema, you know that when a film begins with a voiceover that goes, “Ivaru dhaan namba padathoda hero... Ivaru paeru...” it possibly won’t end well. S Kalyan’s 80s Build Up is yet another strong reason to believe this hypothesis. Let alone the ending, every scene in the film is a reminder that there has been very little to no work done on the writing front to entertain or respect its audience.
By the time you get used to the exceeding numbness the film feeds you with, it begins to nauseate you with its problematic humour. From women to Dalits, a long list of minorities are made the butt of dead-on-arrival jokes. Being a woman is apparently a terrible insult. Even Santhanam’s Kathir agrees to wear a dhaavani and be treated like a girl after losing a wrestling match.
Also, the idea of bringing in a saree-clad Anandaraj for men to ogle at isn’t funny by any stretch of the imagination. But Kalyan doesn’t cease there, he gives things a weird twist by making Anandaraj’s ManjaKili the stepmom to a sex-starved character played by Aadukalam Naren and makes the latter caress the former throughout the runtime. Well, this idea doesn’t take us completely off-guard as Naren’s character, earlier in the film, casually remarks to a survivor’s family that they shouldn’t have let the girls out in the first place.
However, 80s Build Up isn’t completely devoid of ideas or potential tropes. There’s a Rajini-Kamal fanboy rivalry angle here, a character named Idaivelai cause he was born during a movie interval there and we also get a gang of dimwits out on a treasure hunt like every other Kalyaan film. But all these are hardly fleshed out into potent comedies and are mostly reduced to passing references. The underwhelming promos notwithstanding, I always try to give the long end of the rope to films that make some effort. But this Kalyan film is determined to annoy you with all its heart.
Right after the enjoyable DD Returns, Santhanam mentioned that excluding two backlog releases, he’s confident that his films henceforth will satisfy all sectors of the audience. Since Kick and 80s Build Up are out of the way now, I guess we can assume that we are safe from his testing comedy outings in the future.
Several times in the film, Santhanam interrupts Thangadurai’s jokes saying, “Oruthanuku kooda sirippe varaadha comedy mattum pannuviya ne?” After a point in the film, these statements begin to reflect the audience’s responses. How I wish Santhanam developed the same amount of self-awareness while reading his scripts, and interrupted his future directors for a change.
Director: S Kalyan
Cast: Santhanam, Radhika Preethi, Sangeetha, Anandraj, R Sunderrajan