In this violence-centric cinema season, Vadakkupatti Ramasamy, the drama and fantasy genre movie directed by “Dikkiliona” fame Kartik Thyagi, is a good weekend watch at theaters.
Santhanam (Ramasamy), a comedian turned hero, engages the audience with his sarcastic counters and one-liner laugh bursts.
The story revolves around the 1960s era when the village “Vadakkupatti” extremely indulged in superstitions. These villagers believed that their devoted deity vanished in the flood that hit the village. Later on, they are firm that their deity has made his comeback in the form of a mud pot.
Vadakkupatti Ramasamy Movie Poster
The protagonist is an atheist and is completely broke. He takes the superstitions of his villagers to his advantage to live his life without financial constraints.
Ramasamy builds a temple to influence the sentiments of the villagers. This is how the hero makes his living. A tahsildar finds out about Santhanam’s fraudulent initiative and tries to help him with an alternative idea, but the hero denies it. This triggered the tahsildar to close the temple. Did the hero open the temple? The rest of the movie is the answer.
The director sets the narrative fine and makes the audience anticipate some extra flavor in the humor and the content. But, to the question: did the Vadakkupatti Rasamasy satisfy the entire audience? The answer is 50-50. Because compared to previous comedy flicks in Tamil, this movie is way better.
In 2024, people started to find minute details in the films. However, they are also aware that this film should not be watched on the basis of political correctness because of the recent online attack on this film’s hero for his tweet, which was sensitive for atheists.
Leaving aside the political factor, Santhanam is a hero than a comedian in the film most of the time. Some forced comedies in the 2nd half are testing the audience’s patience. And some unintentional humor also came well, which is atypical from Santhanam and his team.
Special mentions to Prashanth, whose look is funny and acting, is comical throughout the movie. His presence with Santhanam is a big positive for this film. Rajendran and Nizhalgal Ravi’s performance is more impressive than the leading cast’s.
In the 2nd half of the film, the Madras eyes portions are convincing yet require better writing.
However, the technical team has done their part well. M.S. Baskar’s performance comes as a savior in the 2nd half, along with Sean Roldan’s background music. Sean’s music deserves appreciation as it acts as a backbone for the film in most cases. Besides that, Deepak’s lens makes us travel back in time, and his cinematography is something to watch out for in the future. Editor embraces modern cinema with his servings of vintage essence.
So, go have fun at theaters alone, but forget your political stand and watch “Cinema as Cinema” if you want to have great fun with this movie. Films like this are refreshing for our Kollywood. As one of the leading actors in the industry has bid goodbye to the cinema, our industry should look forward to producing many content-based movies to keep our Kollywood industry healthy.