Once again, we enter the lives of a few underachieving boys, whose lack of focus is not just their fault but also that of their parents and teachers. The comedy works brilliantly. The drama is less impactful. But the filmmaking is fantastic, and overall, the movie makes you want a third installment. That’s the short take. A longer review follows, and it may contain spoilers.
The Vaazha films are not perfect, but they are super-endearing and super-hard to resist. Part 1 was about young men that one might call “losers”, but the film showed us two things. One, not everyone is suited for a career that’s dictated by performance in school or college. Not everyone has it in them to become an engineer or doctor or whatever, and if they seem to be wasting their time, it’s also because they don’t know what to do. The second lesson from the film was that parents – especially fathers – who withhold love and enforce discipline are as much to blame for the plight of their sons. Many of these fathers are “losers” themselves, and they try to compensate for their failures by making their sons a success. And that, sometimes, becomes too much of a burden. And even the “good student” in Part 1, the one who gets “good grades” and a “good job”, ends up getting a divorce – meaning that you can succeed professionally and yet be a “failure” in your personal life.
All the people who have seen the first film are likely to see shades that resonate within them, and the bonus was that this message was conveyed with a ton of laughs and with an absolutely adorable bunch of actors. Vaazha II, directed by Savin SA and written by Vipin Das, is more of the same – but with enjoyable tweaks. This, too, is a coming-of-age tale. Like we saw Basil Joseph in the earlier film, here, too, we get star cameos. Once again, we get “loser” students and fathers who complain about them (and are clueless about what they think and what they are up to). Once again, we get many, many fights. Once again, we get a scene where a father is humiliated in public, because he owes someone some money. Once again, we get a “sex movie” scene with loud female moans. Once again, we get an instance of someone standing at a height and thinking about ending their life. We get more lectures about how to treat students, and this time teachers are blamed along with parents. There’s a lot of referencing to the first part, but even if you haven’t seen it, Vaazha II stands on its own.
The best aspect about both movies is that they invoke school-age nostalgia without lame and overused and easy tropes. There’s no game of FLAMES. There’s no Cadbury’s chocolate. There’s no annual-day function. Instead, we get fresh and funny incidents – like a circumcision, or a clucking sound that a boy makes to attract a girl. (This sound has a terrific payoff.) The film may be light-hearted at times, but the makers are dead-serious about the craft. The writing and the directing and the acting are fantastic. An early scene in a school assembly has so much happening between so many characters. A brilliantly funny episode in a theatre is cut with the precision of a heart surgeon. Or take this scene where a cop attends a parent-teacher meeting. It begins with the cop getting nostalgic about using the urinal at a school. Then, he looks to the side, and then to the other side. And then, we cut to a wide shot of the cop facing the wall – and it’s filled with graffiti that tells him a lot about the dynamics between teachers and students at that school. Simple scenes are elevated to epic sketch comedy with a side of drama (or else, we get dramatic scenes which have a side of comedy). In fact, the opening scene itself seesaws between tragedy and laughs.
And now, a small complaint. Like with the first Vaazha, the drama begins to drag after a point. The story comes to a logical end after the scene with the cop – and then, it appears to start all over again, this time with scenes of the boys adulting. They realise – for instance – that life abroad is not what they thought it was. They realise that once you get a bad name, it sticks with you. They deal with the death of a parent. They realise that your group of friends will have to split up at some point. They deal with ostracism by locals and racism by foreigners. In short, they learn a lot of life lessons, and the music that was so offbeat and bouncy and trance-y and energetic even in the dramatic scenes now turns traditionally melodramatic, reflecting exactly what’s on screen. I wished that this adulting portion had been left for Part 3, because I do want another installment in this series.
But so many things keep you watching. There’s the lovely cast: Hashir, Alan Bin Siraj, Ajin Joy, Vinayak, Devaraj, Bijukuttan, and some unexpected and delightful arrivals at the very end. The technique of cutting between the incidents between these characters keeps boredom at bay, in the sense that no single scene is allowed to go on for too long. In the latter portions, I was especially touched by the events that occur between siblings in Dubai. In a film culture that often positions parents as gods, these scenes show us that they can be as human and self-centred as anyone else. If and when Vaazha III gets made, I wish they go easy on the moral science melodrama, but even if they don’t, it’s a small price to pay for these films that are so wonderfully alive to the business of living. On the surface, the Vaazha movies are “just a bunch of laughs and tears”, but their brilliance lies underneath. They are examples of how fine filmmaking can elevate the most basic premise to memorable heights.
