In Soodhu Kavvum 2, Guru (Shiva), in his usual quirky style, opens up the dusty box from the 2013 original and tries to revive his ‘kednapping’ business after a jail term. He carries a first aid kit with him filled with alcohol and its accompaniments. The premise is there, but then dated jokes are thrown at the audience, like when a character says, “coma la irundharu,” in reply to someone who asks him, “Goa la enna panitu irundharu?” Such stale attempts at evoking laughter essentially undermine the entire potential of the film.
Soodhu Kavvum 2 begins with the events before the original and then continues to narrate its story after Das’s (Vijay Sethupathi) exit from the story. Arumai Prakasam (Karunakaran) has been the finance minister for the past 12 years and is also the first in the list of corrupt politicians in Tamil Nadu. Meanwhile, a former CM candidate wakes up from a coma after two decades and attempts to reform Tamil Nadu.
The film sparks off promise from the get-go, as it serves as both a prequel and a sequel, but so does the disconnect that sharply pokes several holes into a script that struggles to stay afloat. Apart from restarting his business from scratch, Guru also attempts to take revenge against his dead imaginary girlfriend Ammu.
But why is he also avenging Das’s imaginary girlfriend Shalu’s murder? How does he think Ammu was also related to this and killed in the process? Why was Devanayagam (Karate Karthi) embroiled in the whole controversy? We never know the answers to all these questions. The logic is as ridiculous as Guru’s hallucinations, one of which involves him intoxicating himself to avoid imagining snakes around him.
In an absurd scene, Ammu, Shiva’s imaginary girlfriend, is being seated on an ‘operating dining table’ with a quack doctor struggling to try to remove a bullet wound from her. The MBBS dropout whisks his knife in the air for almost two minutes trying to get it out.
You are expected to be amused by these scenes. It doesn’t age well as both Shalu and Ammu are glam dolls who are made to ‘shut up’ and ‘change clothes’ according to the male leads’ whims and fancies, with no real value to their presence, even if they are just figments of their imagination.
To give credit where credit is due, we do get a few guffaw-worthy scenes that make you realise why you fell for the franchise in the first place, but they are not enough to sustain your engagement throughout the runtime as they remind you of the original far too many times. In fact, it follows the exact template as Soodhu Kavvum, down to even the minute details.
While the original stood apart from the films that were released at the time, the sequel banks on its success and lacks originality in the script and uniqueness in its storytelling. Gnanodayam (MS Bhaskar) and Bramma (Yog Japee) make a comeback, as do a barrage of scenes from the original to connect the first and the second parts, but to no avail. The visual inconsistencies are on the face, with the ‘kednappers’ and the script meandering in all directions.
Nalan Kumarasamy’s debut film Soodhu Kavvum was a springboard for success for actors Ramesh Thilak (fourth film) and Bobby Simha (fifth film), as well as a visiting card for Ashok Selvan who made his debut with it.
The 2013 film is a testament to the fact that a film, when created with honesty and striking potential, could easily light up an industry’s confidence. However, the sequel lacks all these values where all the rules to ‘kednapping’ are thrown into the air, and most of them don’t land in the right places.