Debutant Nilesh Krishnaa’s Annapoorani, starring Nayanthara is a simple and straightforward tale. It is about a young girl who dreams of something and the obstacles that stand in her way.

For starters, Annapoorani isn’t a subtle film. The emotions are always on your face. There is underscoring of almost everything. The proceedings are predictable and more often than not, the film pans out exactly the way you expect it to. But this is the kind of film that delivers what it sets out to. It isn’t that the film is trying to be something else and gets lost midway. Comparing it to the theme of the film, Annapoorani offers a predictable menu but for those who have taste for it, it does manage to deliver the goods.

It is Nayanthara who is there everywhere in the film. The others have little to do. This is a template mass hero film, except that the leading lady isn’t bashing up people in extravagant stunt sequences. She rises steadily, faces a major roadblock midway, has a villain fooling around in the second half and she turns victorious in the climax. The actors are in tune with the nature of the film. It is designed to be a little loud and that is how the actors behave in the film. But the issue I had was that despite all the struggles that Nayanthara faces in the film, we never once believe that she is in the backfoot. Every time something pulls her back, the very next minute she turns victorious. Take for instance, even the cooking championship that constitutes the climax of the film. She is never really in the backfoot for real. And surely, the Karthik Kumar character could have been dealt with more care. The character almost feels like a caricature (or maybe it was intentional).

The good thing about Annapoorani is that it keeps things simple (simplistic in fact), right from the beginning. We are often shown the animation of Annapoorani (as a child) trying to scale an Everest. So, even when the film feels a little silly or childish, this sort of helps to subconsciously recalibrate our expectations. The film feels like those feel-good animation films made for kids but with adult actors.

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