CHENNAI: I t has a plot with the potential to turn into an exciting who-done-it. An investigative crime thriller with knots to untangle and twists and turns to surprise the audience. But the inexperience of the director ensures that his ideas do not get translated on to screen in a way that is interesting and satisfactory. The screenplay is lackluster and the treatment amateurish. The cast apart from its debutante heroine around whom the plot revolves, has a dozen other comic actors in crucial roles. As individuals, these like Rajendran and Swaminathan have regaled us on screen many a time. But given this scenario they neither make their mark individually, nor gell as a team.
It has a promising beginning with a corpse discovered, and the police investigating to track the killer and his motive. The narration moves to the back story that led to the murder. There are numerous characters. But the story-telling shifting from one set of characters to the other in an arbitrary fashion, the smoothness of flow is missing. The men on the whole here are depicted as lechers having loose morals, and no women is spared from their lusty eyes. Their wives are all aggressive. But apart from yelling and berating their erring husbands, they seem to do nothing to stop them. There is Rajendran who essays a factory owner with Swaminathan as his employee and partner in his unholy activities. Another factory owner flirts with his women workers, they reciprocating in equal measure. There is the heroine Ahalya (Archana ) who works in his factory and has a younger brother to support. A love affair develops on the sidelines between an unlikely pair. And finally there is an ice-cream seller played by Krishnamurthy who probably has got the meatiest role of his career. All suspects in the murder case. The methods the ice-cream seller, sympathetic to Ahalya’s plight, adopts to collect money for Ahalya’s impending marriage, is juvenile and straight out of some school drama.
Though the police are shown tracking the clues, their role is minor with the killer confessing to the crime at a vulnerable moment. The scenario in the first part which is dry and uninspiring picks up some momentum in the second half. The scenes leading to the closing moment is unusual and unexpected. If only the rest of the film too had been handled the way the finale has been crafted. A couple of scenes and some sparkling lines, pep up the narration. But the better moments are too few and far between to salvage the film. Yaanai Mel... is at the most a stepping stone for a debutant director.