Neram is like watching an enthusiastic but amateur dancer appear in a professional dance competition; he has spark and some skill but lacks finesse. The concept of it is clear but the design is irregular; each Neram character has the quality of being memorable but not the essence. You’d be less interested in a match between two lower-ranked players, regardless of his improvement on the pitch, than a battle between two top seeds. Neram sometimes feels heavy and heavy, but you admire his efforts nonetheless. But he wants more, he wants something delicious, something he can taste like sinful dark chocolate, but what Neram gives him is Milky Bar. Nice, sure, but not to make you go ‘Bow Chicka Wah Wah!’ style shaft.
My intention was not to see Neram at all when I entered the Mayajaal theater hall in Chennai. Since there weren’t any other movies showing at the time (well, I had a choice, but it was this or the Epic animated movie or worse, a long three-hour wait for the rest of the movies), I went with Neram. , just because I was pleased with the efforts current Tamil directors were putting into their films unlike many of their Bollywood counterparts. When I walked into the room, the movie hadn’t “stopped nicely for me” (I couldn’t resist using Emily Dickinson’s phrase!), so I can’t say exactly how it started. My version started with the scene where Vatti Raja, a small-time pawnbroker and thug, reprimands someone for not paying back the loan while others, including our protagonist Vetri and his friend, look on bewildered. The scene ends with Vetri’s friend farting and I immediately thought ‘Was that necessary?’ Several such decorations weren’t needed, but Neram retained them, making the film look like an over-decorated Christmas tree. Like after this same scene when Vetri starts talking about his love life and it takes us back to his school days when he first met his soon-to-be fiancée Jeena in sixth grade, I think; the scene is cute until the movie also decides to add a full song sequence with Vetri and Jeena performing the predictable ‘foreplay in the park’ (this time with bubbles) and the smarter audience goes ‘Ah! What a cute couple!’. I was impassive.
Later, when Neram gives the goofy romance a break, it works like a Tarantino-esque comedy. Vitri worries about the consequences of not paying his debt to Vatti Raja, while problems also arise when Jeena’s father objects to his relationship upon learning that Vetri is unemployed. Jeena plans to elope with Vetri, but that’s when her chain is stolen; Interestingly, one of the members of the same gang of chain thieves steals Vetri’s money, which he had taken from his friend (I think; I’m an unreliable narrator here, I haven’t seen Neram since the beginning). A side story involves a guy (don’t ask me the name of the character or the actor who plays him. I wish Wikipedia could update his character bio on Neram) who keeps a “cool” nickname for himself, likes to look at a lot of the girls with the eyes (another idiotic scene in the hospital when we hear her inner voice saying ‘Oh, a lady’s voice!’ when a nurse enters the room during an interesting scene) and also, like many others in the movie , he owes some money to Vatti Raja. The way their lives intertwine is interesting because most of the characters don’t know, even after they meet, how similar their problems are. This all happens after the interval, and so many things seem to be the work of pure chance or fate that I wondered why the film wasn’t titled ‘Chance’ or ‘Faith’, the Tamil word for them.
Neram plays out like a simple comedy, although it tries to emulate a Tarantino movie. While Tarantino’s dialogue is so riveting and puzzling that monologues that would be considered ramblings if heard elsewhere sound monumentally profound, Neram simply jokes around with wacky characters; However, credit must be given to its non-linear narrative. The actors act according to their script; they’re less irritating when the script wakes up but not one of them would stay with you after the movie. And who made the decision to give the role of Vatti Raja to Simhaa, who is by no means intimidating? I understand that this is a comedy, but I should at least feel a little bit of what the characters feel towards each other to get more involved with the movie. Even a little more editing prowess would have gone a long way; takes the scene when Vetri’s friend’s boss reprimands him for shaving his beard. He then walks in and yells at another employee, but then apologizes when she turns out to be a girl; the second part happens off screen and we could only hear the gag. Based on the audience response, very few understood the gag because I heard little reaction from the audience; the gag (a bit silly, of course) is underhanded, with not enough sound for audience members to hear it, and a sloppy editing treatment that cuts the gag off quickly. I guess the movie wanted to pack in as many jokes as possible in a short amount of time, but it timed some of them wrong. Well, maybe I’ll see a better outing from its director Alphonse Putharen another time.