Name: Thirumanam Enum Nikkah
Director: Aneesh
Cast: Jai, Nazriya Nazim
Rating: 1/5
Aneesh's
has a story and script that seem to have been penned in the most amateurish, nay bizarre, style. The film is trying to do something novel but fails. We have Jai's Vijayaraghavan, a devout Hindu Brahmin - sacred ash on his forehead and a holy thread across his chest - trying desperately to get a train ticket in Chennai's Central Station, where a tout offers him one, but under an assumed name. So, Vijayaraghavan becomes Abu Bakr, a Muslim.
And in one of the first among an endless number of coincidences, Bakr's compartment has a woman, Vishnupriya (
), also a pious Hindu and travelling under the fictitious name of Ayesha. Here, the tout is not responsible for a Shakespearean kind of comic mix-up, but her boss -- who asks her to impersonate a colleague (Ayesha, of course) for a product demonstration in Coimbatore.
Bakr and Ayesha fall in love (but, of course) and are all set to marry - but not before they convince their families that they have chosen partners from different faiths. Imagine, till the very end, neither comes clean. He feels that since she is a Muslim, he better be one too. She just about imagines the same. And this in this day and age when youngsters care little about such issues!
Bakr and Ayesha fall in love (but, of course) and are all set to marry - but not before they convince their families that they have chosen partners from different faiths. Imagine, till the very end, neither comes clean. He feels that since she is a Muslim, he better be one too. She just about imagines the same. And this in this day and age when youngsters care little about such issues!
Director Aneesh weaves into this preposterous plot a sub-text: Bakr gets friendly with a Unani doctor in order to learn about Islam, and his daughter flips for the guy. And we have the usual melodramatic fight between the girl's brother and Bakr. Aneesh probably felt that his work would not sparkle unless he gets his hero into a Superman mode.
Add to this the lengthy homilies about Hinduism and Islam, with different characters singing paeans to the similarities the two religions share.
And, except for Nazim, who is superbly charming as the girl playing both a Muslim and a Hindu - changing ever so often from a burka to a sari or salwar-kameez, the rest of the cast are no better than caricatures. Jai is his usual wooden best, with even his dialogue delivery most unimpressive.