2018, Tamil, Disney Hotstar, 7.3/10 IMDB, Directed Radha Mohan
Jothika’s best in her 2nd innings, playing her own hyper expressive self, bearable this time as the character is such, a true comeback with vengeance, talking all that she couldn’t in her grumpy speech-impaired character in ‘mozhi’.
The winning combo of director radha Mohan and Jothika is back with a remake from Hindi, ‘Tumhari Sulu’, in a similar melodramatic apartment lifestyle story like that of mozhi, with familiar artists playing familiar characters in familiar backdrop in a familiarly titled movie. The first half is full of RadhaMohansim.. The second half and climax is a let down by psycotheraphy sessions, but saved by few tear jerking scenes from Jo.
The chirpy +2 failed bubbly housewife with a not so gutsy, pussy cat husband and a 11yr old son, living in a rented apartment happily ever after life with a dream to become affluent like Jo’s sisters. They do this by day dreaming all possible floppy business ideas.
Adore every bit of the loving couple dominated by Jo and vidharth behaves more with a brotherly respectful body language beside his bold wife, don’t know if he is scared of actor surya or actor sivakumar. You even miss and feel for it in the second half where the late night RJ job as an ‘agony-aunt’, tosses the peace in the family and it even makes a stay at home wife like me feel proud of being one.
The callers on her late night show, if they make you uncomfortable, imagine what it would do to vidharth and Jo’s family is left with no other choice to react bad and I felt it was justified. The husky (whisky they proudly call it) ‘hello’ was sure an invitation for trouble.
When things get our of hand, and Jo reverts back home quitting the job with a catering contract instead, a true chauvinism, you do feel suppressed as a woman but hey that’s not the passion she worked hard to achieve and the opportunity just landed on her hand and she loved doing it. So no worries quiting the job and anyways she is not qualified to do that either. The character is established well when she easily moves on and her expressions does borders the overboard mark but she does make your eyes cloud, proving she is a fine artist.
Wonder why the radio house didn’t think of accommodating her in to a regular show instead of biding a talent good bye. She could have been given an assurance at the least that she might been called back by creating a slot in the morning, considering the fan base in less than a month which even leads to vikatan awards. Why cling on to the job that is problematic to the family. Wonder if her dream to turn into a psychologist can’t come true in a noon time show?
Lakshmi Manchu, fares well as the boss and her voice seems so husky, she herself could have done the late night show.
I haven’t seen the Hindi version, but didn’t want to. Jo can start choosing characters that needn’t be women centric with a dummy male lead. She does convincingly score with her hyper yet bubbly old self but with these kind of characters she doesn’t leave much an impact.
The climax is a mere fix with a 360 degree turn in the family acceptance for the late night show once again against all odds, simultaneously when she is flourishing in her catering career. All this only to over burden her family more I guess, and that might burden us with kaartrin mozhi 2 may be.. God save us and send our super performing directors in the likes of Ram Kumar, Prem Kumar, Karthick Naren and Mari Selvaraj to expose her to the fresh cinema that we are witnessing today. May be a Vijay Sethupathi starrer would do the magic.