'Kandein' (Tamil, Romantic Comedy)
Director: AC Mukil
Cast: Shanthnoo, Reshmi Gautam, Santhanam, Vijay Kumar, Ashish Vidyarthi, Muthukalai
'Kandein' is a story with the usual boy-meets-girl scenario and little variation. In this film by debutant director Mukil, the protagonist Vasanth (Shanthnoo), charmed by Narmada (Reshmi), resorts to a ploy to draw her attention and sympathy.
The story is about how he gets her, loses her and gets her back again. A breezy light-hearted romantic comedy, the director has laced his narration with a good variety of humour too — slapstick, verbal and situational. Some of it works, but most of it falls flat. The inconsistency of the movie lies in its pace. The sheer predictability of the plot is a sure dampener.
Shanthnoo’s character, Vasanth, is a young urban professional with a cheerful disposition. Spontaneous in his expressions, the dimpled actor breezes through his role with an easy assurance, handling the humour quotient effortlessly. Sharing frames with him and appearing almost throughout the film is Santhanam, as his buddy, Sami. Santhanam’s comic timing and one-liners are undoubtedly a major contribution to the film’s entertainment value. Both of them revel in their roles and strike the right chemistry.
The first few scenes have Vasanth rushing to his village to see his ill grandfather (an over-the-top Vijaykumar), only to realise that it is a ploy by the old man to get him married to a local girl. Clichéd scenes of the grandfather-grandson banter and their mock fights, take up this segment.
Vasanth escapes from the situation by announcing that he has a girlfriend in the city and intends to marry her. When the grandfather asks to meet that girl, Vasanth returns to the city to plan his next move. The hero’s imagination runs wild, as he spots some girls and tries to see if they’d fit the bill. Here, the director uses his imagination quite creatively, yet it gets a tad monotonous. Vasanth spots the comely Narmada and feels that she would be the ideal girl to introduce to his grandfather.
He feigns blindness to gain the attention of the kind-hearted Narmada and gets the desired results too. This scene could remind you of Sashi’s 'Sollamalae', where the protagonist feigns to be a mute, and gains the heroine’s sympathy.
Confident in her acting is debutant Reshmi, with her girl-next-door looks. What follows is a predictable scenario, of the boy losing his girl when his blind act backfires. Hurt by his duplicity, Narmada leaves him in a huff. When the issue
gets resolved and he woos her back, an unexpected turn of events takes Vasanth to a pretense of another kind. How he manages to win her trust and confidence the second time, forms the rest of the story.
Some fights and stunts seem forced into the story by the director to display the hero’s prowess in action sequences.The songs composed by debutant Vijay Ebenezer, are peppy and go well with the youthful feel of the film. A romantic
comedy with it’s genuine fun moments, few and far between, 'Kandein' is an average fare.