Aaranya Kaandam - Animal Kingdom

Sing to the tune – ‘It’s a small world. It’s a woman’s world after all…’ Pasupathy (Sampathy) has to rescue his wife Kasthuri from Singaperumal, Kodukkaapuli has to find his lost father, Kaalaiyan and Sappa (Ravi Krishna) too plans to take away his one-day love interest Subbu from the same old man. This sum up the Aaranyam Kandam in Ramayanam – Hero-like has to save heroine-like. So who is Ram, Raavan, Sita, Laksman here? No clear answers as each character changes its trait as the movie unfolds.

The three sappais in this movie have to prove they are not a one, but unfortunately they end as losers. Singamperumal (Sappai 2) couldn’t sexually satisfy his wife and there is a scene where he sees ‘Adults only’ movie poster desperately. Jameendar (Sappai 3) is forced to move out of his hometown, accompanied by his son Kodukkaapuli. Does this episode strike a bell with Ram and Lakshman exile part? One of the brilliant scenes in the movie is Sappai after having sex with Subbu, to be frightened by the calling bell, who later finds it to be water-can. And there Subbu says ‘Nee epdi polachanne ennala namba mudiyala da’ Cut to back and Jameendar is covered by blood, who opens his eyes to realise he is still alive (Epdi polachanne namba mudiyala da) and cut to forth, Puli says to his dad ‘Nee wasteu pa’ (Sappa). Exceptional correlation, I must admit.

Subbu toys with Sappai, gains his trust and trap him to her plan. Here, this scene the camera moves like a spider spinning circular trails around the radials to shut in its prey. You do not need more than this to speak about cinematography section -Enough is as good as a feast. Most of the male character names cover an animal’s name – Singamperumal (smiles like a lion) Gajendra (bear a resemblance to a wild elephant), Puli, Kaalaiyan etc. whereas the heroine hold an animal inside her, so she doesn’t need a name explicitly.

If the dark humor dialogs like ‘un pondaatiye kaapatha mudiyala, nee ellam epdi da en appava kaapathuva?’ , ‘yosanakabal’ , ‘prapoo, kuspoo’ are the biggest plus for this movie, some gravity defying stunts, Pasupathy single-handedly slaying five to 10 men with a palm-sized knife in slow-mo’s makes you smile, but for other reasons. BGM is good at places, noteworthy mentioning are the scenes where Puli baths his father, Sappa-Subbu scenes but why a romantic one for fight scenes?

As the saying, too many cooks spoil the stew, movie gives you load of moments to ravish, unfortunately the more you speak, and the more are the spoilers. My kind advice is stop reading reviews, because the twists and turns are to be enjoyed in visuals, not in words. This is truly a commercial cinema written over every frame.

Aaranya Kandam – SAPPAI(s) padam

Mr. Critic 5-Star: 4

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