Vaanam Kottattum Review 

Bharath Vijayakumar

Melodrama can sometimes distance you from a film. But it is not a deal breaker. But a complete lack of emotional connect with the characters on screen certainly is.Subtlety or underplay of emotions is one thing. It is not the same as creating a world of muted characters where you don't relate to the emotions that these characters go through.Vaanam Kottattum is close to neither of the extremes. What we have is a film filled with distinct characters that tries to bring out the emotional repercussions that arise out of their actions. How effectively is the question.

Vaanam Kottattum has a solid premise with well written conflicts. An estranged head of the family comes back to them after serving in prison. The two grown up children are ambitious and stand on their own legs. The timing of his return creates a certain tension. This is one of those films that gets all the difficult things right but doesn't really come together as a whole. The revenge angle hovering around in the form of an outsider wasn't really needed as there are enough conflicts within the family. And that entire twin angle turns out to be an exhausting exercise for hardly any returns.

The major issue I had with the film is that while there are no exaggerated events on the screen, there is a lack of authenticity in the narration at crucial junctures. Sarathkumar does a crime in what is supposed to be a moment of rage. But at other times he is portrayed as a rather calm character who has his emotions under check. The very basis of the film revolves around this incident and a lot of connect is lost here. Similarly some of the developments between Vikram Prabhu and Madonna as well as between Aishwarya Rajesh and Amitash are too filmy and stick out. But the Aishwarya - Shanthanu portions have a sense of warmth about them. At times it looks like the film tries to pack in too much and doesn't really do justice to any part. There is a nice idea of portraying two contrasting scenarios. A rich dad who runs away from debts leaving his daughter to struggle and a not so rich dad coming back and trying to help his children though they are self sustaining. But again nothing much comes out of this or rather we don't really invest ourselves into all this as we would have if they had been fleshed out better.

The performance of the entire cast is pretty good. I particularly enjoyed two of them. Balaji Sakthivel who looked and behaved every inch the person he was portraying and a nice subtle performance from Shanthanu. Sid Sriram's score keeps you hooked but I really wasn't sure how much correlated it was to what was on screen.

Bottomline:

Vaanam Kottattum has a lot going for it but it never affects you the way it ought to have. Instead of fully exploiting its intriguing core, there is an attempt to pack in too much resulting in an okayish drama!

Rating: 2.75/5