Vaathi

Star Cast: Dhanush, Samyuktha Menon, Samuthirakani, Sai Kumar, and ensemble. Director: Venky Atluri. Vaathi Movie Review Out ( Photo Credit – A Still From ...

Venky Atluri in his direction quite cleverly understands that he has to make his movie around Dhanush in a way that his message is conveyed and the audience is entertained too. The actor manages to make you feel the pain that he goes through and his struggle he does to give the children access to education. All the actors who play students do a very fine job in their respective parts and make the movie a very good experience. The story that the writer sets out to tell about the present and how a boy is not that great at studies stumbles upon a box of footages from the past. The actor with his little frame beams maximum power in a movie that has all the actors larger in frame than him. Samyuktha Menon gets to play a stereotypical part that is always in service of the leading man Bala. The film completely forgets to address this and gives him a conclusion. With Dhanush coming to the big screens with a film with the same word, it was surely an intriguing factor. The film is a simple entertaining watch that also tries to educate, you can give it a try. He balances out the seriousness and drama of the subject pretty well. The film wants to educate people about the importance of education, and make them believe that only academics can make people think better and away from the orthodox system that we are conditioned to live in. Little does the corrupt head of the said institute knows that the teacher will equip the students of the rural school to top the exams and excel even more than his city children.

It's a shame that Dhanush's entry into the Telugu movie industry has to be marked by a film of such mediocrity and confused politics.

Sentimentalisation in the name of religion seems to have blinded the director to the fact that education is a basic right, separate from religion. Vaathi even attempts a tongue-in-cheek reference to Master, when the ‘JD Soundtrack’ plays briefly at the beginning of the film. The director seems to think that a lecture from Dhanush and a trick he plays on the students is enough to bring down centuries of segregationist practices. Without a foil we can take seriously, the film flounders to give its hero a convincing arc of defeat and then victory. It’s a shame that Dhanush’s entry into the Telugu movie industry has to be marked by a film of such mediocrity and confused politics. It is a bland paean to the Economically Weaker Section (EWS) quota, which in itself is casteist.

'Vaathi is not a badly made film. It is exactly what it appears to be — a melodrama that will manipulate its way into your heart, stay there for five ...

Vaathi is not a badly made film, it is exactly what it appears to be — a melodrama that will manipulate its way into your heart, stay there for five seconds and then disappear forever. The film is also not inclined to show why Vaathi is a good teacher. The film mostly stays true to its genre — a mellow melodrama that tugs at your heartstrings, about a professor who takes a whole school under his wing and instils a love for school and education in a mostly disinterested but diverse set of students. He also looks disinterested and uninvolved in a film where even the few comedy bits are plagiarised and are at least two decades stale. And then when we go back to the late ‘90s and meet him in the flesh, Atluri inserts a fight scene. A word or a phrase or even a line from a song entering the Tamil cinema lexicon and overstaying its welcome is as regular as a big star’s Pongal or Deepavali release.