Regional

Tamil cinema has travelled light years in technique. Cinematography and editing have a finesse that is comparable with the best in world cinema. But screenplays remain shoddy, and stories are not exactly novel. Thiru’s latest work, Theeratha Vilayattu Pillai (a term used in Tamil mythology for Krishna) may well be a repackaged Dev Anand starrer Teen Deviyan, where he cavorted with Nanda, Kalpana and Simi, falling in love with each.

But Thiru’s Karthik (Vishal in a new romantic avatar) is a lot choosier than Dev Saab was in 1965. The Tamil hero believes in sampling before selecting, be it a pen or a lass. What, however, flies over his conceited head is that no woman today with the slightest modicum of dignity would stand that. The playboy’s three damsels – Jyothi (Tanushree Dutta), Tejaswani (Neetu Chandra) and Priya (Sara Jane) – flip for Karthik, with a stiff Vishal trying hard to get past his image of fist-fighting and stunt-simulating hero, and slip, though clumsily, into a romantic mode. Oozing oodles of machismo (read male superiority complex thickly buttered with arrogance), he whiles away his time with three cronies clowning around. The humour turns out to be juvenile, and the love stories are so passe that even a 13-year-old will not buy them.

And if this is Tamil cinema’s idea of ushering in Valentine’s Day, it seems soggy and silly.