Manmadhan Ambu (2010) - An arrow that missed target!

I'm not feeling happy or jumping in joy to shout that I watched the movie within the first week of its release. Well, I didn't enjoy the movie for the most part, but I can't ignore it as an ordinary movie either. If it had not been for the cast & characterization, this would have terribly gone wrong. Acting was fine from ‘everyone’ – need special mention to Ramesh Aravind. If I'm not mentioning the others, its because I don't want to waste time writing their names. Very natural performance from everyone including those kids. When the master is with them, even the kids can't go wrong with acting. But when it comes to script, was it scripted well? Why all the chaos for such a silly subject? Editing was poor during the second half. Or was it purposely made to confuse the audience? Simple things were complicated so that they could fall in place to form the climax!! I can't categorize this movie under comedy either. There are scenes that will make you laugh, but most of the dialogs are indecipherable. I initially thought there was some problem with the theater's sound system because all noise and voices came from the center and it was unclear too. Its the next day that I found out that many people at different theaters experienced difficulty understanding Tamil dialogs, the reason being that they have used real-time sound for the movie. There are advantages of using this kind of spot recording for movies (a few of Kamal Haasan's earlier movies are examples), but for this movie - was it necessary?

When I shifted to forgetting about the star cast and started watching the movie plainly, that didn't work either. At least the camera should have been utilized more effectively so that the beauty of the places could be admired to get rid of boredom. Closeups and portraits were fine, but there were not enough scenes that show the beauty of the trip on Splendida or the landscapes at large of Venice or Spain or any other location. Its Manush Nandan's maiden sail at cinematography and maybe thats what he could do best. And kudos to Trisha for dubbing in her own voice.

The only remarkable portion in the movie was “Neela Vaanam” song - great stuff there, though the idea didn't originate from them. This song is amazing work and deserves appreciation for music, singing, direction, and even costumes. If they had put half the effort put into this less-than-5-min song, the movie would have been a good one to remember. Again, why these complications for a simple story? Complications as a result of bad scripting and editing!!

Manmadhan Ambu is an arrow that deviates at halfway and misses target. If you take it as a journey, you may enjoy the ride; but as a movie I’m not happy about it.

4.5/10