Director Mysskin certainly has a following of his own for his terrific works like Anjaathe, Yutham Sei and Nandalala. Generally the key ingredients of his success are a Script with intelligence (be it the plot, literary references, characterization), No nonsensical commercial escapism and a fantastic Presentation. Unfortunately his new film Mugamoodi marketed as the first superhero movie in Tamil by its big producers UTV falls comfortably into the trap.
Beginning with a dedication to one of the Grand Masters of martial arts ‘Bruce Lee’ and having claimed to be an inspiration of one of his favorite movies ‘Enter the Dragon’ in of the pre release interviews, Mugamoodi lacks the clarity of whether to present a gripping martial arts action thriller or make the audience indulge in the fantasy world of superheros like Batman (or) Spiderman. Clearly confusing!
Inspired from too many interests or sources, like martial arts, superhero comics, The Dark Knight, the directors own thriller genre fetish, the scenes don’t have a context most of the times not helping the story grow on the viewers. Even disappointing it was too see commercial escapism’s like a song in the Alps injected in to the script from nowhere to depict the romance of the lead pair.
The characterization was wafer thin and no one character leaves a mark. Hence the acting, which never really exploited the talents of its title lead Jiiva who had given meaty performances in films like Raam, Eee, Katradhu Tamil and the most recent Ko. Pooja Hegde, a Miss Universe runner up has virtually nothing to showcase either and was plastic. Narein’s dialogue delivery in Tamil which struggles not to have the Mallu influence is slow, packing no punch as the villian in a super hero movie like this. His imitation of the legendary ‘Joker’ from ‘The Dark Knight’ is a big joke!
While music director ‘K’s’ work in Yutham Sei was excellent, neither the BGM nor the songs (though only a couple, thankfully) were notable. A great music director knows that he could steal the show with no music too, whatsoever in certain scenes. In Mugamoodi, there is music which either irrelevant like a violin symphony during a chase or too much of it over-weighing the importance of the scene or the dialogue. ‘K’ for Kiddo you would grow up over the years, so no worries.
Verdict: The only saving grace, the movie is not long!
Cinema Paradiso 