Every Tamil commercial film has a set of elements that have now become requisites. First, we need to have a hero, who is a bit of everything. From being a shy person to magically becoming a charmer overnight, our hero can do anything he wants. The film should have a friend (inevitably played by a comedian) who doesn’t have a life for himself. The main objective of this friend is to be funny and listen to the woes of the hero. Next, we need a ‘loose ponnu’ heroine with absolutely no agency. Her job is to look pretty, find insane reasons to fall in love with the hero. I almost forgot, the heroine has another important role to play: smile coyly at the hero and dance with him. A relatively newer addition, thanks to Saranya Ponvannan, now our heroes have a funny, good-natured, innocent mother as well. She gets a few gags too. Depending on the genre of the commercial film, the prominence of these elements differ. An action flick will have more of the hero doing whatever he wants (forget logic) and less of the heroine who will walk in to provide ‘cute moments’. Throw in some romance, a few funny jokes, an action sequence or two if necessary and somehow we are convinced we have a film in hand. Continue reading “Sema movie review: This GV Prakash film has nothing new to offer” →