Nanban Oruvan Vantha Piragu Review - Harmless One Time Watch

Ashwin Ram

Nanban Oruvan Vantha Piragu is a coming of age dramatic flick written, directed and the lead role is played by Ananth. The film is presented by Venkat Prabhu.

Premise:

Ananth dreams to begin an event organization company with his friends. They struggle to execute it due to technical difficulties. The hero is broke and his friends venture into different jobs. How Ananth patiently learns the winning ways forms the remaining story.

Writing/ Direction:

It’s a certified coming-of-age youthful entertainer with all the template moments. The formula is tried and tested, the tropes placed are the ones we have seen already, there is a heavy ‘Meesaya Murukku’ hangover. Yet it still works, especially the friendship angle here is packaged well and appealing on-screen. However the family track and the romantic portions are a letdown, so the wholesome feel is missing. Some moments are overly exaggerated, like naming the company as NOVP, there is nothing really special in it. Nostalgia is only through vintage songs and sadly the director has failed to create feel-good montages that are essential for the particular genre. Certain textbook checkboxes are carefully ticked, alongside the dynamic graph in the friendship part, the internal conflicts of the hero, stage fear for example and how he wonderfully overcomes it at the end. The payoff for it is solid, but then it isn’t confidently done as there are more flip side additions to it as a result of self-doubt. Separating the narrative as different chapters is a smart idea, titling them with AR Rahman songs is a smart move.

Performances:

The film’s biggest issue is the hero Ananth’s performance. He struggles to express all the crucial emotions, his crying feels serial-ish and his dialogue delivery is also single-dimensional. The supporting artists are also not good enough, fresh talents would have added so much value rather than opting for all these YouTube influencers. Bhavani Sre exhibits nothing but flat acting. Surprisingly, amidst the bunch, RJ Vijay has done better. No big scope to score for Elango Kumaravel.

Technicalities:

The first and foremost impressive fact is the production value, in spite of a new cast and crew, the scale looks big with a flurry of shots in most scenes, also a part of the flick is filmed at Singapore. Pretty decent songs, the singers make it quite a lavish album, good work with the background score, and incorporating some of the blissful vintage tracks of AR Rahman and perfectly placing them is a big plus. Some old-school edit patterns here and there, thankfully the overall packaging looked fine.

Bottomline

A passable flick which had the potential to provide impact at its emotional highs, but watered down due to the underwhelming performances, especially by the lead hero makes it an average watch.

Rating - 2.5/ 5