Madan is the fiancée of Ambu, Deepa’s friend. And Mannar is the detective to trail Ambu started loving her in due course aptly convinced by Deepa who developed a sudden interest in Madan and became his fiancée, who was forced to sacrifice Ambu to Man(nar). Have I made myself clear? If not don’t blame it on me. It is what Man Madan Ambu all about. Confusions galore from the take one of the film, which taken off in Kodaikanal flew to Paris, Barcelona, Marseilles and ends at Venice.
After the supremely hyped super hit of the super star now it is Universal Hero’s turn to woo the audience to the theatres. The much expected movie after an excellent Dasavatharam, comparisons are inevitable but as like previous offerings Kamal never one in emulating the success of the previous ventures took a different path. Mixing comedy, sentiment and human emotions always a delicate attempt hardly fails to succeed in tamil cinema. Kamal the writer scores over kamal the actor here. Dialogues are so powerful but got mixed in the melee. In a super star movie all other actors were invisible when he is around. In a kamal’s movie all the actors look like Kamal Haasan as they were try to match him skin to skin, word to word, movement to movement. Some times it works, sometimes it fails miserably. The best example is kamal’s directorial venture Mumbai express.
The problem or it seems the problem with MMA is it takes neither the comedy route, nor the commercial route and jammed in between. When watching a character like Ambujakshi (a dignified portrayal by Trisha) a super actor with a heart who cant tolerate the ever suspecting fiancée (Madhavan), took a 3 year break from love to complete the professional part of life, took a holiday trip to Paris with her divorced chatter box friend Deepa with her two children(sangeetha) fall in love with the detective Mannaar (Kamal) sent to tail her and report her color of modesty in every possible way second by second by MMS, email, live chat and what not. Whether she took the decision because she fed up with over protective and over jealous rich lover or out of compassion over Mannar whose fate was changed due to a terrible accident by her is not clear.
The first half of the movie fairly engaging, as the scenes are moving at a pace you can digest. Second half plays truant when all the characters assembled in an alien location speaking the same language in their own voices keep the viewers guessing on their own except for some appreciable laughter here and there. The change of heart of Ambu towards Mannar can be understood as compassion turned into love. But Mannar’s sudden affection towards her can’t be justified as he has hardly shown that side of love and could be construed as sympathy converted into an opportunity of love. That too he has almost ditched his employer breaching the basic code of conduct for a security or detective agency or whatever for his own personal favour, though the reason justified the act. But all starts well that ends well.
Performance wise it is not a memorable one by Kamal’s own high set standards. But in this movie good performances are reserved for Madhavan, Sangeetha and to some extent Trisha. But the hero of the move is the cinematographer Manush Nandan who brought the lovely locales of the movie and the magnificent ocean liner rightly titled SPLENDIDA lively. The editing deserves a mention especially the flashback cut song of Kamalhaasan replayed or played backwards. A truly delightful five minutes of the film and the song beautifully sung by the aging actor. The live recording adopted for the first time enhances the proceedings some times and the background noises mar the proceedings some time.
Nothing much to cheer about on the songs front (music by Devi Sri Prasad) as the titled track Manmadan Ambu was edited out (for want of time or what) the other songs fails to capture. But he managed well on BGM. The much controversial verses rendered by Trisha and Kamal was edited out (I supported this wholeheartedly) with the second part of the same come in background at the end as the title card rolls. Surprisingly there is no duet between the lead pair, surely a disappointment for Trisha.
Sorry I forgot to mention the brilliant cameos by Urvashi and Ramesh Aravind (he is chatting and I am vomiting – nice ramesh)
If it is a Kamal directed movie the disappointment level would have been much lower. Since it is a K.S Ravikumar movie, who never fails to impresses that too in a kamal movie (this is their fifth offering) a disappointment creeps in.
Go for it without any expectations and enjoy the ride in Splendida. This is vacation time. A virtual tour of Paris, and Venice, come with an unbelievable story and cost.
Mathusuthanan.
