Movie Review: I (Tamil)
I is love, I is pain, I is devil, I is revenge, so goes the movie's trailer. Unfortunately I is also very ordinary, all gloss and no heart. Shankar's latest magnum-opus to hit the silver screen in four years (excluding Nanban, his 2012 3 Idiots remake) is well-intentioned, ambitious and grandiose in scale just as his other works, letting his imagination run riot, and yet the romantic thriller from the visionary director is flawed, misguided and a disappointment, even though it manages to sail through its exhausting more than three-hour runtime. Shankar, famous for tackling message-driven subjects in an interesting-cum-entertaining manner, casts his eye on the beauty-conscious modelling world this time around, and while Vikram and Amy look their parts, they alone can only do so much.
To cut a long story short, I revolves around Lingesan (Vikram), a body builder who goes on to become Mr. Tamil Nadu and eventually the most sought after male model when the girl of his dreams Diya (Amy Jackson), a supermodel, cajoles him into appearing opposite her for a perfume ad shoot, thus leading to him making a string of enemies along the way - a fellow body builder, a rival male model (Upen Patel), a spurned lover (Ojas Rajani), and a business magnate (Ramkumar Ganesan). Finally there's also Diya's family doctor Vasudevan (Suresh Gopi) who may be much more than what he is beneath all that sweet talk.
Shankar's penchant for bringing out the protagonists' various faces is well-known; right from Gentleman to Kadhalan to Indian to Jeans to Mudhalvan to Anniyan to Sivaji to Enthiran, his leads either appear as twins (Jeans) or exhibit two different dimensions of their persona (like in the case of Gentleman, Mudhalvan and Sivaji), or suffer from a psychological disorder to reveal their inner vigilante selves (Anniyan), or even get created as an artificially intelligent humanoid (Enthiran). I is no exception to this rule.
The hero first shows up as Lingesan, an ingenuous muscular body-builder, then as a fit and suave model Lee and finally as the revenge-thirsty gaunt hunchback, making us impossible not to draw parallels with Anniyan's Ambi, Remo and Anniyan owing to their similar character arcs. The motivation being the most obvious difference between them. While Anniyan (the character) was more of a manifestation born out of Ambi's frustration with the corrupt system, the hunchback's more personal. Deformed and unable to reunite with his beloved, he seeks to settle scores with his enemies who've shattered his life into pieces. There's also this underlying theme about jealousy and the importance we attach to beauty and looks, but it's treated with skin-deep seriousness and favours ironically instead the film maker's tried and tested formula of unloading grandeur and spectacle one scene after the other to keep the interest levels sustained.
Sadly even they don't work (surprisingly the portions shot in China are dull as ditch water) and there's a strong sense of déjà vu, although I must admit Aila Aila song is very creative and well-conceptualised. What's worse, the characters come off as caricatures, the humour is crass (making fun of one's physical condition, seriously? Santhanam's character says he will stand by Lingesan's side no matter how he looks, yet he goes around making fun of the disfigured villains!), certain scenes look antiquated, overly melodramatic and ham-handed, and the lesser said about the cringe-worthy transgender track, the better. Perhaps for the money the makers invested in the movie, I seriously wish the writers had invested enough time scripting a proper story than come up with this predictable and overly long done-to-death revenge saga.
PS: The most hilarious thing (unintentional of course) is the heroine's mother character who speaks Hindi all through the movie with her making no attempt to lip-sync for the Tamil dialogues. Didn't Shankar find any suitable Tamil-speaking actor for that role? Whatever!
Shankar's penchant for bringing out the protagonists' various faces is well-known; right from Gentleman to Kadhalan to Indian to Jeans to Mudhalvan to Anniyan to Sivaji to Enthiran, his leads either appear as twins (Jeans) or exhibit two different dimensions of their persona (like in the case of Gentleman, Mudhalvan and Sivaji), or suffer from a psychological disorder to reveal their inner vigilante selves (Anniyan), or even get created as an artificially intelligent humanoid (Enthiran). I is no exception to this rule.
The hero first shows up as Lingesan, an ingenuous muscular body-builder, then as a fit and suave model Lee and finally as the revenge-thirsty gaunt hunchback, making us impossible not to draw parallels with Anniyan's Ambi, Remo and Anniyan owing to their similar character arcs. The motivation being the most obvious difference between them. While Anniyan (the character) was more of a manifestation born out of Ambi's frustration with the corrupt system, the hunchback's more personal. Deformed and unable to reunite with his beloved, he seeks to settle scores with his enemies who've shattered his life into pieces. There's also this underlying theme about jealousy and the importance we attach to beauty and looks, but it's treated with skin-deep seriousness and favours ironically instead the film maker's tried and tested formula of unloading grandeur and spectacle one scene after the other to keep the interest levels sustained.
Sadly even they don't work (surprisingly the portions shot in China are dull as ditch water) and there's a strong sense of déjà vu, although I must admit Aila Aila song is very creative and well-conceptualised. What's worse, the characters come off as caricatures, the humour is crass (making fun of one's physical condition, seriously? Santhanam's character says he will stand by Lingesan's side no matter how he looks, yet he goes around making fun of the disfigured villains!), certain scenes look antiquated, overly melodramatic and ham-handed, and the lesser said about the cringe-worthy transgender track, the better. Perhaps for the money the makers invested in the movie, I seriously wish the writers had invested enough time scripting a proper story than come up with this predictable and overly long done-to-death revenge saga.
PS: The most hilarious thing (unintentional of course) is the heroine's mother character who speaks Hindi all through the movie with her making no attempt to lip-sync for the Tamil dialogues. Didn't Shankar find any suitable Tamil-speaking actor for that role? Whatever!
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