Saroja - a review

On Saturday night, me and Ram decided to visit the nearest live-band pub (i wish so) theatre that was screening Saroja. It happened to be Priya Theatre Complex. The Cini-Mini-Sugam is fast becoming a legend except for the callous and arrogant attitude of the theatre owners. The theatre is located in a vantageous point and my only wish is…it should adapt itself to the changing trends in movie watching experience.

The Priya Complex Theatre owners sell tickets at twice the price listed on the ticket and have no concept of advance reservation to better the experience for movie-goers. The Theatre requires an upgrade! You can still notice a mad rush at the eleventh hour with people being treated like caged species. For Pete’s Saravanan’s sake, Madurai-ites need a better experience!

Coming back to the movie…

I still have to admit that Venkat Prabhu, the director of Saroja, has to graduate in his way of story-telling. His movies (well, not too many - just two till date) somewhere fall between a TV-serial and a realistic movie. I am not going to tell you the story in order to flag a spoiler alert over here. I am trying to see if I can get to terms with the Director on what he has attempted to tell the viewer.

Saroja, like his earlier one, Chennai-28 is definitely not a message on social responsibility. So, will it fall under the commercial entertainers genre? Yes, it is! The Director picks up a Volkswagen Transporter (Type 2) as his vehicle of choice in the movie. VT T2 is responsible for transporting the four main characters, SPB Charan, Vaibhav Reddy (distinctly carries the Telugu look), PremG Amaren and Shiva. I am wondering why Venkat decided to use a VT T2 when he could have very well used an old and then ubiquitous Matador van. I probably suspect that he became a victim of VT T2’s popular culture references. Except that our lead characters aren’t hippies out here.

Sometimes it is kind of boring to see the same bunch of Chennai-28 team in this movie, though some of their presence is only brief. May be, I’m biased here. PremG Amaren offers some relief in the name of comedy. He does well to break the seriousness of the situation but repetitive nature of delivering a parodic-statement by facing the camera, takes away the spontaneity of comedy. The Director somewhere fails to package the comic-thriller with next-door-neighbourhood characters, with spoof by PremG.

Music by Yuvan Shankar is a major let-down! Like the Director, he loses track. Although I see reports that his music is a plus, I totally disagree! But I should give a special mention to the scene where the VT T2 overturns to the tune of a symphony. With the characters taking a tumble inside the van along with bottles and chips packet…it is a pure delight for a minute! I liked the light-hearted treatment of the collision situation.

Night time camera work is pretty decent. Although, i didn’t find exciting camera angles, I should appreciate Venkat Prabhu for a some daring use of shoulder-cam shots (i have noticed this as a growing trend in recent years). On the downside (too many to mention), a lot of predictable scenes and themes could have been avoided. If it is parody of mainstream media/cinema on one end (in the form of PremG) then why does the Director himself fall a prey to cliche?

In all, you cannot find much meaning from a rather time-pass movie. I guess the media hype surrounding this movie doesn’t do much justice (as always) to me.

I would watch this one after getting high!