Mirchi Shiva, the popular radio jockey-turned-actor is acting in another comedy, Sonna Puriyadhu. The film is directed by debutant Krishnan Jayaraj, a former associate of C S Amudhan, who incidentally was the director of Tamizh Padam, the film that catapulted Shiva to stardom overnight.
Sonna Puriyadhu is produced by Habib and Saandika Amarnath under the banner of 350 Degree Film Corp and has music by Yathish Mahadev.
Vasundhara Kashyap plays the female lead. Manobala, Blade Shankar, Aarthi, Singamuthu and Meera Krishnan are part of the cast.
Sonna Puriyadhu is about a dubbing artist Shiva (Shiva) who has a fear of commitment and a total disregard for the institution of marriage. He is determined to remain single and enjoy the pleasures of bachelor life.
His mother, however, is desperate to get him married and when nothing works, she finally resorts to blackmail. Shiva is forced to meet a girl of his mother’s choice, Anjali (Vasundhara Kashyap) and they get engaged. But now Shiva gets cold feet and wants to back out.
Luckily for him, Anjali too is not the marrying kind and together they conspire to fool their parents. Trying to sabotage their own wedding, while at the same time pretending to be the ideal couple for their parents, creates a few amusing situations. But, otherwise,
We have the usual bunch of friends following the hero, and of course the loving mother, but the one character that deserves a special mention is the grandmother. Shiva’s grandmother is a net savvy, Angry Birds addict, who has changed her Facebook status to single after her husband’s death and receives a friend request from Siddharth Mallya.
The film would have benefited with more scenes of this highly modern grandmother in her traditional garb. The dubbing scenes of the Chinese movies by Shiva and his friend are also quite entertaining, but they are too few and far between to do much to improve the narrative which is extremely slow and predictable.
Scenes like the TV show that Shiva and Anjali participate in and the many scenes at pubs and other places that show the friends endlessly boozing are quite tedious and boring.
Shiva is consistent in his performances; he can effortlessly mouth the most hilarious of dialogues while keeping an absolutely straight face. And though there is not enough pace and the plot seems unimaginative and dull, Shiva does manage to keep the audience entertained.Vasundhara Kashyap has given a very ordinary performance and comedy certainly does not seem to be her forte.
In spite of all the innovative promotions that showed Shiva donning a Harry Potter look in one of the posters and also imitating the trademark DiCaprio-Winslet pose on the Titanic in another, the film has nothing new to offer. It is just another average entertainer for Shiva’s fans.
Rediff Rating: