Thalaivan Thalaivii Review | Vijay Sethupathi and Nithya Menen Breathe Life Into This Regressive Noise Pollution

Till 2016, all the movies made by director Pandiraaj catered to a wider audience, and from making a national award-winning Pasanga to an action drama like Kathakali, he was that filmmaker with no tags attached to his name. But from 2018, starting with Karthi starrer Kadaikutty Singam, Pandiraaj sort of decided to settle for B and C center films focused on Family “Paasam.” After Kadaikutty Singam, he went on to make Sivakarthikeyan’s Namma Veettu Pillai, and the last one from Pandiraaj was the Suriya film, Etharkkum Thunindhavan. When it comes to his new movie Thalaivan Thalaivii, Pandiraaj is pretty much staying in that comfort zone, and what he is trying to do here is to bring the idea of divorce in a fun way to the B and C center audience. While the performances of Vijay Sethupathi and Nithya Menen are making you laugh out loud, the movie’s anti-divorce stand has a very regressive tonality.

Aagasaveeran, a 10th-fail guy who has mastered the art of making various kinds of porotta, is our main man. Arasi fell in love with him when he came to her home with a proposal, seeing his attitude and his culinary skills. But the chemistry and happiness didn’t last long, and the family politics created problems in that relationship. What we see in Thalaivan Thalaivii are the events that led to the separation of this duo and how they try to resolve the matters.

The director’s credit is shown in the movie when the character played by RK Suresh sees bits from the films Kadaikutty Singam and Namma Veettu Pillai on TV and says someone should thrash the guy who wrote this kind of craps. It is a self-aware troll, and in a way, Pandiraaj is trying to say that this movie is not going to be his usual love and forgiveness tale of a big rural family. And in the first half of the film, when we see the honeymoon phase of the lead pair’s relationship, the chemistry is so fun that you would hope the movie will maintain that energy. But once the romance is over, the movie is literally and figuratively loud, and Pandiraaj is randomly introducing characters to push a simple disagreement into a big fight.

The idea here is the same old thing where the director wants to cater to the old school thought process that marriage is ultimately a big compromise you make to have that family life, which has kids, your in-laws and relatives. However, since saying that blatantly in this era of the internet would cause problems, Pandiraaj decides to create this outspoken duo. When the mother-in-law says we won’t make you cook food, our leading lady says even if you ask me to cook, I won’t do it. Our hero is cooking for his wife, the wife is calling him by taking his name or saying Da or Dei. Hero is okay even when he gets an occasional slap from the heroine. Pandiraaj wants us to believe that because of all this, his movie is different and progressive. But what you ultimately see in the film is the same old compromise Story. The only change here is that the compromise is done by both the characters, knowing that their in-laws are toxic.

The making style has that frenzy we experience in every other B and C center movie, with all those jump cuts and montage sequences. The writing uses the grounded persona of Vijay Sethupathi and the quirky side of Nithya Menen to create some genuinely funny moments. There are these humorous instances where Perarasi forgets that she is mad at her husband. This was one of those films where Yogi Babu’s comedy really worked, because he was used as the representative of the audience who was looking at this loud madness. To make the movie different from his earlier films, Pandiraaj has taken a conscious decision to opt for different voices, and this time we have Santhosh Narayanan handling the music, and I must say that Pottala Muttaye is such a trippy song.

The casting of the lead pair is the only thing that is saving this movie. The on-screen chemistry of Vijay Sethupathi and Nithya Menen is infectious, and they both are having a ball performing those scenes. If any other actor had portrayed the role of Aagasaveeran, the audience would leave the theater because it is not easy to play a screaming character in a likable way. Nithya Menen is able to be that equally adamant wife character without slipping into the caricature zone. She has already established her prowess in that zone recently through Thiruchitrambalam, and once again, you get to see that enthusiastic version of Nithya. The rest of the cast has names like Deepa Shankar, Chemban Vinod Jose, RK Suresh, Kaali Venkat, etc. And it is kind of ironic that the least annoying performance came from Yogi Babu, whose character is not integral to the movie.

Don’t go to watch this movie with a relatively empty stomach, especially at a pricey multiplex theater. The kind of food porn one gets to see in the first half of this movie is such that you might order Kothu Porotta in Swiggy or Zomato from inside the theater. Luckily, the second half comes to the rescue of your pocket as the noise pollution takes over from Porotta and non-veg dishes. Clocking in at two hours and twenty minutes, I am not saying this movie is boring. In fact, the argument scenes featuring the title characters, especially in the first half, are extremely hilarious. However, the comedy-coated final stand of the movie is problematic. The smartness of Pandiraaj is that, because of the literal loudness, many people won’t even bother thinking about the film’s politics.