Rajini Murugan ***
Dir: Ponram. With:
Sivakarthikeyan, Rajkiran, Keerthi Suresh, Soori. 149 mins. Cert: 12A
The past weekend’s
Pongal festival – marking the point at which the sun begins its six-month
ascent through the firmament – has yielded a full crop of Tamil releases. For
some while, it looked like the comedy Rajini
Murugan might never appear from behind the clouds. The second collaboration
between writer-director Ponram and stand-up Sivakarthikeyan fell subject to
(not uncommon) production delays and then worse luck besides: its initial
release date coincided with the Chennai floods, a moment when those cinemas not
underwater were serving as makeshift shelters. Yet the film that emerges proves
so spirited one concludes no deity could hold it back: certainly, the packed
matinee crowd I saw it with appeared delighted it had arrived.
The choice of
Madurai, Tamil Nadu’s third largest city, as a location opens up fresh
locations for a filmmaker to explore, and new conventions to mock: as the
opening voiceover establishes, this temple city nevertheless retains a
reputation for harbouring all manner of rogues and thieves. While our narrator
takes pains to debunk this notoriety, the film immediately undercuts him upon
introducing Siva’s title character, a born loafer who spends his days pinching
pennies from the administrators of the city’s endless festivals so as to avoid
doing any real work. Very quickly, we sense we’re watching both a love letter
to Madurai, and a spot of site-specific mischief-making.
Recounting our hero’s
misadventures involves a measure of sketchiness: Western viewers may be
reminded of any number of showcases for Saturday
Night Live comics, a similarity underlined by the script’s copious in-jokes
and leftfield references. This style can try the patience over two hours; at
two-and-a-half, you might think Rajini
doomed, but Ponram has a secret comic weapon: a hyper-frenetic approach that
extends from the leading man’s machine-gun delivery to his agitated
back-and-forths with best bud Thotathree (Soori) and beyond. A funeral ceremony
unravels when the deceased rises from the dais; an aged bureaucrat gabbles so
intently at a public meeting that his false teeth fly out.
No, it’s not subtle,
but for an apparently simple slacker comedy, it’s working hard to entertain us,
sustained by the kind of clever structuring idea the Tamil cinema now
specialises in. In order to gaze upon his beloved Karthika (Keerthy Suresh),
our Raj cobbles together a phoney teashop opposite her home – and, against all
expectation, makes a success of this utterly impromptu, half-arsed venture.
Though it follows a skittish route, some transformation is thus visited upon
the protagonist: in the course of the only form of work he’s willing to commit
to – getting into a young woman’s underwear – the planet’s least ambitious
individual is reinvented as a wholly self-made man.
The consequences can
be predictable – yes, our accidentally mobile hero rubs up against local
gangsters – and the denouement, in which Raj has to close a deal on his
grandpa’s property, feels less fun than the set-up: despite the film’s
irreverent flourishes, it remains at heart conservative, a movie about the
making of an estate agent. Yet Sivakarthikeyan breezes very likably through
every transaction, gaining amusing support from Gnanasanbandam as his weary
headmaster pa, and Achuthanand as the pompous prospective father-in-law. Like
its dark-horse hero, it’s dragged its feet getting here, but Rajini Murugan finally comes through as
a crowdpleaser that needed to reach its audience, come hell or perilously high
water.
Rajini Murugan is now playing in selected cinemas.
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