Naan Avalai Sandhitha Podhu review: Emotional potboiler

Direction: LG Ravichander

Cast: Santhosh Pratap, Chandini, Innocent

Director Ravichander has taken a leaf out of his real-life experiences and churned out a film Naan Avalai...

Set in 1996, Moorthy (Santhosh Pratap) is an aspiring filmmaker and shares a room along with similar struggling assistant directors (Chaams, Dir Murthy etc). One night he chances upon a young girl Kumari (Chandini) who seeks his help to locate an address in Teynampet. She tells him that she ran away from her house in Mayavaram after fighting with her drunkard dad (GMKumar) to reach her aunt in the city. However, she has lost the paper with the address. Since it was nighttime, taking sympathy on her Moorthy agrees to drop her at her native, but as they reach her village, things go upside down. The village bigwigs who mistake them as eloped lovers and are in no mood to listen to them, force Moorthy to tie the knot with Kumari.  That night, under the influence of alcohol, he has a one-night stand with Kumari but leaves the place in a jiffy the next morning. Fate brings him back to Kumari as she is pregnant. Whether Moorthy realizes his dream of becoming a big director one day forms the rest of the story with mother sentiment thrown in towards the end.

Except taking few cinematic liberties like a titillating number and a tasmac song, Ravi seemed to have faithfully followed his own story. The lead pair – Chandini and Santhosh though adequate are for most part of the film look glum. Since set in mid 90s, the director has made his homework carefully avoiding mobile towers, usage of cycles and landlines etc. The problem with the film is its predictability without any interesting twist. The first half is slow and the film somewhat picks up post intermission. The only bright spot in the film is the portions involving ace Malayalam actor Innocent.