Genius – Nothing clever about this Genius!

Bharath Vijayakumar

More often than not Suseenthiran seems to deal in binaries. His films are either good or not. The middle ground is very much absent. His latest, Genius is an instance where he is clearly out of form. This is a film that desperately wants to tell a message. The major problem is not even this. For example let us take a film like Appa. While many would agree that the film might not qualify as a proper cinema and feel more like a sermon, the filmmaker also probably wanted it to be like that. But what we have here in Genius is a product that tries to do a bit of everything and ends up in the middle of nowhere.

The basic one liner is about how the protagonist ends up with a psychological condition due to unreasonable stress thrust on him and how he finds a way out. Genius starts in a rather light hearted mode, gets a bit serious in the middle and then becomes a masala all of a sudden. There is no real consistent mood in the film. The manipulative screenplay and the jarring tonal changes ensure that we are never really fully invested for any considerabe length of time. The hero's father (Aadukalam Naren)is shown as someone who never really cares about his son's studies and once he comes to know about his son's capabalities he turns into a pyscho overnight with the sole mission of ensuring that is son remains a topper in studies. There is a not a semblence of credibility in these scenes. The way Aadukalam Naren behaves with the parents of his son's classmate has got to be one of the most cringeworthy and manipulative of scenes in the recent past. In the same way the hero's boss at his office is projected as a villain. This is a film that is supposed to showcase the perils of modern day life. But what it does is make carricatures out of regular characters. All these blemishes pale in comparison to the last segment of the film that deals with the trafficking of women. There is really no hope of redemption after this.

Genius does show hopes at times. Few lighthearted scenes work. The length (98 mins) is a saviour which ensures that the film remains tolerable. But on the whole we keep searching for Suseenthiran in the film.

Bottomline:

Genius is a film that wants to show us the dangers of a stressed lifestyle. The irony is that the film ends up putting us under stress a few times.

Rating: 2/5