Bottom Line: Pooja - Tonally messy action drama
Vasu
(Vishal) son of G K (Raghuvaran) one of the most respected and among
the wealthiest men in Vishakapatnam. Due to some misunderstandings Vasu
earns his mother’s (Radhika Sarathkumar) wrath and starts living with
his friends at a market place. Accidentally, Vasu meets Divya (Shruti
Haasan) in a shopping mall and gets attracted to her. In a short time,
both start liking each other but things turn around when his mother
calls him to village take revenge on Siganna (Mukesh Tiwari). Who is
Siganna? What’s his issue with Vasu’s family? What led to
misunderstandings between Vasu & family for four long years? Why did
Shivaram (Sathyaraj) support Vasu’s retaliation? Forms the rest of the
storyline.
Vishal
is very good as the protagonist. His performance is the film's only
strength and, to an extent, makes up for the poor script and weak
characterization. Shruti Haasan has nothing much to do except rollick
around in song sequences. It's also good to see a slimmer, Andrea
Jeremiah in an item song. Sathyaraj bowls you over with his performance
as the tough ADSP Shivram Nayak. Unfortunately, his role is short-lived,
but he does have few powerful sequences. Soori is fine, managing to
evoke some laughter from the audience with his senseless one-liners.
Radhika Sarathkumar, Prathap Pothen, Sithara, Kaushalya, Jayaprakash,
Manobala making up the long list of people who have appeared on screen
at some point in the movie. Mukesh Tiwari is nice add on to the film,
with his menacing eyes he can go places.
Pooja
is primarily a revenge drama with many of the parts: a happy family,
misunderstandings, an intelligent villain, and attack on the loved one
trigger the revenge, multiple roles trying to take revenge, that
accompany the genre. Pooja with a running time of 160 minutes doesnt
even carry a single brilliant shot during its entire duration. Till
Interval there is nothing significant happening in the film and hoping
for the better second half when the family angle in the film rolls on,
but there is nothing in it either. Kannal Kannan has choreographed the
action sequences well. Priyan's cinematography is average. What the film
suffers from is a weak screenplay. The villains are stereotypic, the
climax is clichéd.
Director
Hari needs to get out of the star based formula films and must try his
hand at making some different massy films with the good cast. Movie even
has few inspirations from Hari’s previous films like Arul, Bharini,
Veghai etc. Dialogues by Shashank Vennelakanti are nitwitted. For
Example, “Maa Thatha oka lucha, Maa Nanna oka porambokku alanti
yeddavalaku poyina nenu entha buildup evvali”, “Lavanganni market lo
konachu love ni ye market lo kontaaru”. Director should have worked a
bit more with dialogue writer for better results. Songs by Yuvan Shankar
Raja are another disappointment. Background score was decent &
showed Yuvan's growth as a music director. The Editing was pretty decent
considering how lousy the movie turned out to be. Dubbing of the film
is okay, but the one dubbed for Shruti Haasan was too loud. Even limited
VFX used in the film is dull. Production Values of Vishal Film Factory
are grand.
All
in all, Pooja is a felonious waste of time, effort and money. Despite
few decent performances by the actors & the technical crew, Pooja
fails to create the much needed impact because of a sloppy storyline. If
the screenplay had been much tauter, this movie could have gone to
become a decent hit at the box office.
When
movies like “Raja Rani”, “Bhadram”, and “Indrudu” try to lift the
standards of Tamil films, “Pooja” type of movies end up pushing them
back by a solid twenty odd years.
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