Irandam Ulagam

Just finish watching the movie, and am bit confused how to put my review exactly.. I saw the movie by myself in Theater, just to gain the whole experience unbiased.

I felt it was a good movie.. at least till the intermission.. It has stunning visuals, good looking actors and a decent screenplay.. but after the intermission, I started waiting.. waiting.. and waiting for the movie to move.. Just imagine you are shown a eye-catchy wallpaper, and made it to watch for quite some time, till a point you get annoyed.. That's how I felt for most of the time in the second half of the movie. I felt like nothing was happening on the screen for many minutes in the movie. There was too many void gaps in the movie IMO. Removing those gaps would have made it a good movie.. But still, the Eye candy movie at the least will impress everyone by its visuals.

About the crew: I loved Anushka in this movie, more importantly I felt the warrior role suited her the best so far. Arya was great parts, but felt he wasn't at his best in few parts. Kudos to the Costume designers, Cinematographer and VFX team. Selva is a great movie maker and I have no rights to criticize his work, but I had sat through his movie. I wouldn't have complained if he hadn't made me to sit in theater and wonder what is going on in the movie and left me wondering for too long, till the movie continued itself.

Anyway just for the Visual style and decent first half, I would rate it 5/10. I wish I could rate it more, but I can't.

Irandam Ulagam' is one of the most expected Tamil movie of the year. The same visual fx team who worked for 'Avatar' is rendered some magical touch for this movie. India has never seen such a colourful grand visual movie till now. From the man of creativity, Selvaraghavan's yet another variety of splendid movie followed by the success of 'Aayirathil Oruvan'. The actors, especially both the lead Arya and Anushka gave theirs best shots to deliver director's imagination come reality. Even supports from the foreign characters were very impressive especially theirs lip synchronizations. They had no accent, according to the story they are from the different world so it's a clean cover up.

It was quite like 'The Lovely Bones' where people from two different worlds were connected to each others in some way. In the land of human where love is thousands years old, a girl meets her perfect man. What about the boy, does he thinks same as she thought about him. Not like the 'love at first sight', for the time being it will become even. With all the hurdles the love grows stronger and they become inseparable. How careful the couples move their relationship from one to another level, no matter what there will always be a negative force in nature to pull them apart. A man in such position 'How far he would travel for his love?' is what the director asked in the movie tagline. People with same face each in a different world and theirs romance tales were narrated in the movie. With an alternate world, the alternate culture, lifestyle and yet to blossom the first ever love in the innocent young hearts in the history of their kind is what we are going witness.

I liked the movie because it was a refreshing concept, in a way it is totally new to the Indian audience. Like I said the performances were excellent. The locations were too beautiful, in fact most of them were computer generated images. The stories from two worlds were narrated frequently one after another till the intermission. Then there is no coming back to the actual world, from there everything is told in the world similar to the fairies. It will leave many people in confuse to see new in all the corners of the alternate world. Some will may lose concentration in transition. So it is clear that the movie is not for everyone especially the old generation will struggle to catch up with the movie.

Okay, now lets talk about the negative side of the movie. As an experimental movie product of this part of the earth, it got acclaim from fans and critics but the movie had few minus points too. The tale should have been a little shorter for a theme like this. The biggest drawback was the songs which won't fit into the story. Giving a new dimensional thematic movie is a great idea but the director should not bore the audience by stretching its length. Yes the songs are good to watch in the television set in music channels but not in the movie. Selva should have disobeyed the protocol of making an Indian cinema by scrapping those songs. Then it would have been around 20 minutes shorter and will be perfect. I know he got great visuals in his mind to put those into making cinemas like the Hollywood giants Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson. For that he has to think to make international standards by discarding usual Indian masalas. Because of those song tracks I felt the movie was little drag in the last quarter of the story. But the background score was very nice. The movie will test your patience in the near end portion by keeping it going for a little longer than you expect to roll up the end credits.

The movie had very fine special effects but 3d graphics were not quite convincible in parts. Especially those birds flying around far away in the sky and the lion hunting scenes were looked like some video game characters. Except those inaccuracies rest were indubitable. The way they showed the alternate world was really cool, very intelligent and a creative presentation. If you think you can handle the multiple layer movies like 'The Time Traveler's Wife' and 'Mr Nobody' then why can't this which had dual layer. In the end everything left to the audience, how far they understand about what they see and hear. Like the movies 'Endhiran' and 'Aayirathil Oruvan' you would not need to be highly smart to get the movie, a human with common sense will do.

7.5/10

Love is in certain cases worse than action sequences, it has no logic, it can crop between two completely strangers who will later claim theirs to be love-at-first-sight, it can bring a patient back from death when the doctors themselves declare a hapless situation, it can breach boundaries. But to what extend are these boundaries breached? What happens when such a breach occurs? Selvaraghavan's "Irandam Ulagam" is a boundary breaching love with a visual finesse, credits to the director's imagination and the men behind the lens.

Irandam Ulagam is a parallel love story set in a fantasy world and in our times. The love stories are distinctly opposite, present day Arya tries to woo Anushka while fantasy Arya lives in a world where there is no such word as love. Anushka's feminine qualities fill the present day while the fantasy Anushka kicks Arya in the groins just to keep some distance between them. But a tragedy strikes and brings these worlds together, Aryas meet and what happens when present day Arya meets fantasy Anushka forms the rest of the story.

Selvaraghavan's distinct signature is written all over the movie, but as good as it might be, not everyone will be able to appreciate the artistic touch in the screenplay. The characters are well described and used only to the point; the lip sync of the Georgian actors deserves special credit. Cinematography is on par with screenplay and in certain cases exceeds the latter. Background score hymns but it is the anti- feminine-alcoholic song that got the best of the whistles.

Arya and Anushka have stamped their authority while Anushka creates a bigger impact as Varna (fantasy world) than Ramya (real world). Dashes between Aryas have spared the need for a separate humor track. When a Georgian actor, younger than Arya and Anushka is introduced as Arya's mother one finds it tough not to smile. Despite all these pros, there seems to be a drag in screenplay and action scenes lack logic, as usual. But in the midst of a romantic flow, it can be excused.

Long story short, A good romantic movie but not for all.

Selvaraghavan is a very creative director but he tends to get carried away with crude dialogues or too many elements like in this movie. The idea of parallel worlds and a couple having different experiences in same is fantastic. But what a mess of costumes, cinematography and even screenplay around the abnormal worlds .Anushka is as usual brilliant in all the worlds and as a fan, I truly felt sorry that her talents got wasted in such a movie. Arya is an actor of limited range and also looks terrible in the abnormal world with the wierd makeup and hairstyle.

You cant create an alternative world and timeline and have white looking people and then suddenly brown people. Lesser said about the costumes the better, absolutely no consistency. CGI sucks big time. This movie needed a director like SSR or Shankar to do justice to the sets, cinematography, costumes and all the visual elements. There was a good story there but very poor execution at all levels.

This review is after 5 years of the film's release, I don't even know if someone would read it or not. (Tomorrow is Ngk's release)

Well, Love can't be described more purely in any film. This film had that soul, soul of the universe.

In first half, Arya and Anuska's love in Earth is pure Bliss. I can't take my eyes off Anuska, she was so charming and charismatic and carried forward the soul of the film. The movie non-linearly also tells about their love in parallel universe. Which was good, but we all know budget and time constraints so, Vfx was not that great, and it lacked the soul which can be felt in Earth scenes.

Songs and bgm were too awesome, I can keep on repeating this word soul for this film. Everything in this movie, actors, screenplay, songs, everything had contributed to the soul.

I loved it soooo much until first half.

But second half was .. t.e.r.r.i.b.l.e .. I expected much more. There's no problem in the story. But the way it was picturized. It was so cheesy. But this can also be due to budget and time constraint. But even though, all the foreign actors had perfect lip sync.

Climax was good.

Good attempt to be honest. But Parallel universe concept in Indian cinema is something so ahead of its time. Also, everyone can't feel the soul of love in this material world, you know, ..