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Last Updated Wednesday November 25 2020 12:01 PM IST

'Thodari' movie review: The great train drollery

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Ordinarily, a heist or an unforeseen commotion in a running train is taken quite seriously. Granted, it’s reel life wherein the going gets bizarre sometimes, but director Prabhu Soloman has taken it ‘athukkum mele’ with a narrative that struggles to get started in the first half, and then picks up strange elements along the way, piling up a stock of emotions that will either prod you to jump off the train or sleep with one eye open to see when it’ll all be done.

The first half of the bilingual is rather uneventful; it covers the umpteen smartass ways you could shoot repartees at your superior. Poochiyappan (Dhanush) is the employee, a railway pantry boy, and Thambi Ramaiah is the said superior. With awful lot of jibes and other collateral damage, the story chugs on with Poochiyappan starting up a romance with Saroja (Keerthy Suresh), the touch-up girl to an actress who has occupied one of the bogies.

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There is also a neurotic and racist Malayali commando (Harish Uthaman), a crafty politician (Radha Ravi) and a few other pantry boys (including Karunakaran) on board. At the end of the first half is where the play begins to unravel. An unmanned train that is racing at a pace of 130 km/hr. An unlikely romance between the pantry boy and the slightly loony touch-up girl. A slew of TRP-hogging media persons trying to catch the event live. With the said ingredients, it either passes for a lethal cocktail or there’s a movie miracle waiting to happen.

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It could have even made for a spoof movie; at least where the media comes in. A mishap in full view and the mockery is on the media that is trying to sell it by holding debates. This is a done-and-over-with scenario where the mindlessness of the TV channels is in full glaring view. In fact, it’s ‘a spoof in a spoof’ situation where a train carrying close to 800 passengers is headed to the valley of death and the leading man does a boogie on top of the bogie!

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It’s this uncanny mixing that makes Thodari difficult to endure. The Thambi Ramaiah interludes go from bad to worse. It runs devoid of tension, thrill or even a mild curiosity to see how it will finally end. The bright points are its lead actors—Dhanush and Keerthy. Dhanush disappoints in his choice of role, but does what is given to him with characteristic genuineness. Keerthy feels like a fresh addition to the drab scenes. She adds a dash of madness that even though isn’t witty in its composition, stands to prove that the girl can offer some comedic respite. D. Imaan scores with a couple of good, albeit distracting, songs but the BGM is a letdown. A few CGI errors and a lot of cinematic fallouts notwithstanding, if you do decide to board the train, stay close to the chain, just in case.

Rating: 2/5

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