After the lightning...everything is OK

Sometimes I think after watching a movie about how I discovered that movie
and try to trace back that path. So here comes the path that I took to find Minnale.





More than a year back I discovered my first Tamil movie after someone telling me to look into South Indian movies because they where an inspiration for Quentin Tarantino. I watched the Tamil movie Villu with actor Vijay. The movie was so over the top that I found it enjoyable and started to look for other films from the same actor.












A few months back I watched the movie Sachein, which I didn't like but the lead actress played by Genelia D'Souza danced in one sequence to a song. I liked he music and had heard it before on a World Music cd from Putumayo. I had that on my p.c. and the song was called 'Zara Zara'. But in the movie they used the words Vaseegara, so what next……YouTube is your friend. Searching for Vaseegara / Zara Zara and found the Tamil song, which was Vaseegara from the movie Minnale.
The next thing I did was looking for some info on wikipedia and checked the rating on imdb, they gave the movie a 7.4 so I started searching on a Tamil forum, found the dvd and watched is.

Bollywood (Hindi, Tamil and Telugu) movies are for me separated into two categories:
One category are movies that I also dare to watch with non-bollywood lovers
and the other, second category are movies that I don't dare to watch with people not known with the bollywood genre.

The last movie I saw belongs to the latter. The movie is Minnale, a South Indian Tamil spoken movie. Don't get me wrong I loved the movie a lot, it's a good picture. But there are a few things thats made it a cat2 movie:

1. The unnecessary comedy parts
2. Over the top fights ( I like them, but found them not necessary in a romantic movie)
3. Too much talking, especially in the first part.

I can now give you a review of the movie, but everybody can read that on imdb and wikipeda.
Minnale means Lightning, and when that happens in the movie (after 26 minutes), than it becomes interesting. The movie is a romantic comedy, with the first part more towards comedy, while later it becomes more dramatic/romantic (more my style).
Okay, I'll tell you in short: Boy meets girl, girl is going to marry another man which she have not seen yet. Boy poses as the man she is going to marry and makes her fall in love. Later the man shows up she was supposed to marry….etc…Love triangle story indeed.

  The film is directed by Gautam Menon. I saw a few movies of this director (I watched the movies with highest rating) and I liked them all. You can say that he is one of my favorite South Indian directors, the top is Mani Ratnam.




About the cast: The hero lead is played by Madhavan, he plays very good as the different characters, little criminal (pokkiri), romantic hero. Sometimes it's a bit to different, but hey it's a movie :) Also I like his energetic dancing style, which is more fast and energetic than in Hindi bollywood movies.

Then the heroine Rina is played by beautiful actress Reema Sen (not Raima Sen or her sister Riya Sen, or Rimi Sen). I've never seen her in other movies and Minnale was her second movie. I have to say I liked her mostly in more traditional clothes in a sari. Maybe I watch too much Indian movies indeed ;)

One of the most important part for me is the music (and also the dancing and picturisation of the songs). I have to say: I'm a happy man. The music is beautiful, the lyrics are touching, the picturisation is superb. Especially the song Vaseegara, fantastic love romantic song with good lyrics.
The music is from composer Harris Jayaraj, he is really good with the songs as well as the background music. I have seen other films done by this composer (Kaakha Kaakha, Ullam Ketmuae, Vettaiyaddo Vilaiyaddi, Unnale Unnale and Vaaranam Aayiram) and a few of them are also directed by Gautam Menon. This man Harris, he has good taste for enticing meodies.
It's difficult for me too say with words what I like about the music, but with me, it's mostly about the melodies.

In short: A very good romantic comedy movie. I enjoyed every part of it.
I recommend to go watch this movie with a girl…( I didn't, but hey if I could I would) ;)