Film: Nanbargal Narpani ManDram
Director: Radha Bharathi
Cast: Senguttuvan, Akshata, Naren, Charmi, Anbalaya Prabhakaran
It’s meant to be an ode to friendship as expressed in the title. The hero and his assorted gang of buddies even form a ‘Friends Welfare Association’. But there is not much of friendship we get to see here, no sacrifices made nor any special effort by the gang to come to each other’s aid. It’s the usual story of a love affair gone awry because of some old family feuds.
It’s love at first sight for Sathya when he sets eyes on Divya, her family having just returned to the place, after years of being away. But Divya yearns for her childhood playmate Appu who had once rescued her from a child trafficking gang, not realising that Sathya and Appu were one and the same. And when that issue is cleared, there is the villain of the piece to reckon with, and then a decade-old feud between the two families to be solved. The flashback to the feud is a series of cliches. It’s the hero’s home production and for a debutant he is just about adequate. And he seems to be quite content dancing to some dream songs, romancing the heroine, and engaging in some solo fights, never mind if the plot is a battered-to-death one, and the screenplay an insipid unexciting affair. It seems a laboured effort for the debut heroine to lip-sync her lines, and she seems to need some acting classes too. With no fresh take on either the situations or in the presentation, the film is one big yawn.