Idhukka Aasaappattaen?

Idharkuthane Aasaipattai Balakumaara, built its hype for very few reasons - its lead character being on a hatrick victory run, and catchy songs off its album. And thus, overlooking the fact that its director gave us the on-screen disaster Rowthiram in 2011, IAB hits screens, setting expectations high.

Only to send them crashing down faster than a Lambhorgini. The film, shifts between the lives of two main protagonists, the marketing professional, beer-loving Bala, and the inebriate housing board-dweller "Sumaar Moonji" Kumar, and a couple of other smaller people - Saravanan, "Putty" Babu and 'Painter' Rajendran, as they all cross paths in a single day.

Positives. Uhmm... okay. Vijay Sethupathy, who has already proved his acting mettle through his previous films, gives us a solid performance, and so do Pasupathy and Robo Shankar, who keep us engaged for a short period of time. Mahesh Muthuswami's cinematography is commendable.

The film begins off at an interesting angle, only to lose pace and go slow-motion for the rest of its runtime. With a rather pointless storyline, filled with attempts at humor that are extremely weak, IAB is a 140-odd minute babble of dialogues that almost have you screaming for its end. Its mediocre screenplay leaves very little space for the editor to shorten screen time, thus making the movie extremely draggy. To call the film a caper comedy seems unworthy, for the film managed to evoke very little laughter, and its apparent caper did not seem to engage audiences at all. With a forgettable album and BGM, Siddharth Vipin's music is average, though the visual effect of the songs are much better, thanks to choreographer Raju Sundaram.

Ashwin Kakumanu, Nandhitha and Swathi deliver decent performances, though they still have a long way to go. The film marks the break in Vijay Sethupathy's golden run, and while the experimentation is appreciated, better selection of scripts would behoove his career in the future. Director Gokul delivers yet another disaster, and it would be wise of him to make an actual contribution to cinema before he vanishes from the silver screen. This fail of a caper comedy may finally break the streamline of films in this specific genre and have directors turn towards better ideas.

Aditya Baskaran