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Perumal: Mindless entertainment

February 16, 2009 13:16 IST

In some ways, Pa Shanmugam's Tamil movie, Perumal directed by Vincent Selva, is a Valentine's Day fare.

Perumal (Sundar C) who works for a travel company is a sort of recovery agent, local goonda and violent do-gooder, all rolled into one. He is wooed in earnest by Saroja (Namitha), a rival automobile dealer (read thief) who displays all her considerable assets (which is why she's in the film anyway), to capture the hero who, of course, never even glances in her direction.

Enter Idithangi, (Vivek, who's by now lost whatever charm he possessed in comedy and uniformly bores us with his oft-repeated pieces) who is accosted by our hero and swears eternal revenge on him. But it's his Telugu twin, Indrasena Reddy who really manages to provide some laughs with his horrible accent and clothes.

To provide some semblance of a story, Perumal journeys to Cudappah in Andhra Pradesh (which has become a favourite hunting ground as it makes the film viable for both Telugu and Tamil audiences) to seize a vehicle  and stumbles upon Alamu (Meenakshi). Note the perfect name-match! She's a surgeon who stumbled upon a horrible plot where children die with alarming regularity in her hospital through the use of banned medicines. Naturally, Perumal helps her escape but inevitably ends up inviting the wrath of Vengaiya (Kota Sreenivasa Rao), whose son he's beaten up.

What follows is supposedly a cat-and-mouse game where Perumal manages to evade all of Vengaiya's brawny traps and eventually beats him at his game, while staying at his side all the time. Thrown in are a couple of Srikanth Deva songs featuring the heroines. Ennai Enna Seyappore is surprisingly nice to hear, while the piece de resistance (!) obviously is the remix song, Kaadhal Vaibhogame, sung by M K M Arivunidhi, the CM's grandson.

Apparently, the makers decided that nothing much was needed to make this into a complete movie because there's nothing else. Impervious to all this, however, everyone seems to have had a blast, judging by their happy-go-lucky expressions, inane dialogues and stunts that defy even Matrix. So will you as long as you watch on a day when you have absolutely nothing to do. Leave all logic behind and go without expectations for this one.

Rediff Rating:

Pavithra Srinivasan