Raghu Thatha - Kayal's conflict

Raghu Thatha

Comedy / Social

Tamil / 134 mins

Zee5

Keerthy Suresh (Mahanati, also Bujji from Kalki 2898) is one of the better actors in South Indian cinema. Astonishingly, her filmography features some mind boggling films  (Bhola Shankar, Annatthe, Sarkaru Vaari Paata) making one wonder who is helping her with her script selections.

She has great emotional range, spiffy comic timing, diction and comfort with all southern languages, decent dancing skills and a charming screen presence. She could be doing much better work than being a walk on in star vehicle movies. Many good actors / stars of the past  have been able to walk this thin line  extremely well, hopefully she finds a way as well.

The movie's name is a hat doff to a memorably funny sequence  from a Tamil movie where a young suitor is "learning" Hindi from a professor to land a chance with the guy's daughter. It has for ever been an inside joke among Tamil speakers' knowledge (or the lack of) of  Hindi.

Set in the 70/80's, Kayalvizhi (Keerthy) is a free thinking young woman who works in a bank, writes novels in the sly, leads protests agains  Hindi imposition in her town, even succeeding to get the Hindi Sabha closed. A young engineer who is electrifying villages, Selvan (Ravindra Vijay, Muthu from Family man ) is an admirer of her views and eventually demonstrates affection for her.

Kayal's doting grandfather Raghotthaman (M S Bhaskar) is about to die and wants to see her married ( his two other wishes being a Biryani and a picture with MGR!). Respecting this thought, as well as seeing her intellectual compatibility with Selvan, Kayal agrees for the marriage.  Soon, she discovers that Selvan is actually a chauvinist and her get out card is a big compromise on her ideals. 

The support cast all enact their parts well, especially the lady playing Kayal's firebrand sister in law, superb! The movie is light hearted fun and quite breezy (The first 30 and the last 30 especially). It does feel a little conflicted as a satire, Selvan's change of personality seems very sudden, the angle with the Hindi Sabha leader does not add much to the story, so the movie does feel like a lost opportunity. All that aside, given all the serious themes that we tend to watch these days, this movie is a welcome change.