Atharvaa plays a young man who is good at most things, except telling a girl that he loves her. This keeps happening on loop till the end, with Preity Mukhundhan and Kayadu Lohar as the women of his affections. The angle about pining for someone gets tiring after a point, but a bright cast and some big-time humour help get the movie across the finish line. That’s the quick review. A more detailed analysis follows, and it may contain spoilers.
For most of the duration of the first half, Idhayam Murali is a solid entertainer. Director Aakash Baskaran (who also wrote the screenplay with S Ramana Girivasan) has clearly worked hard to make this movie a “theatre experience”. It has rich production values and Thaman’s catchy music is like a trampoline that the scenes keep bouncing on. And there’s the fun of spotting actors and influencers in practically every part. Everyone is a known face. Jonita Gandhi plays a schoolteacher. Thaman plays the hero’s friend. There’s ‘Parithabangal’ Sudhakar, Niharika NM, FEFSI Vijayan, along with Fahadh Faasil and Malavika Mohanan. Even the “bit roles” usually played by junior artists are played by someone we know. Babloo Prithveeraj, for instance, plays an MLA’s enforcer who appears in just one action scene. Best of all is the cameo by Chinni Jayanth that is a reminder of Idhayam, in a train-station scene recreated from that 1990s blockbuster.
And there’s a reason for that cameo. The story revolves around Idhaya, played by Atharvaa as the modern-day incarnation of the character Murali played in Idhayam. This version, though, is not a complete introvert. He can sing, hang out with guys and girls, crack jokes, and even crack a beer bottle on someone’s head when that someone angers him. It’s just that he cannot say “I love you” to the girl he is in love with. In the case of Murali in Idhayam, we travelled with his loser-dom. We empathised with him. Here, I wish they had given the otherwise studly Idhaya a reason for his shyness and hesitation in that one particular department. Some of you will say that there are guys like that. I know. But there’s a difference between whether something is possible in the real world and whether it seems plausible on the big screen. Somehow, the big, extroverted nature of the filmmaking did not make me buy that Idhaya was that much of an introvert.
Instead, I felt that they were using this trait to keep dragging the movie through its punishing runtime of two hours and forty-five minutes. Idhaya meets the character played by Preity Mukhundhan. He is tongue-tied. He fails to tell her what he feels for her. Idhaya meets the character played by Kayadu Lohar. He is tongue-tied. He fails to tell her what he feels for her. Idhaya meets the character played by Preity Mukhundhan a second time. He is tongue-tied. He fails to tell her what he feels for her. By then, some exasperation may have set in for some viewers, especially given that these are all “love at first sight” situations. There’s no major writing behind the characters, who all have one note to hit. This would have been fine in an easy-breezy rom-com. But Idhayam Murali wants to get serious at times, and yet it keeps cracking self-aware jokes that tell us not to take the film seriously. There’s a bit of a personality disorder here. The film feels weightless. It’s one thing to not want to make a melodrama. But the flip side is that we never truly feel for Idhaya’s plight.
Up to the interval point, the scenes flow into each other smoothly. We think an action scene is just a macho excuse for the hero to flex his muscles. But no! This leads to him being taken to a hospital, where he meets his next “love at first sight” crush. But the second half gets contrived and “cinematic”, with barely convincing plot points like the one where Idhaya goes to the US in pursuit of a girl after getting engaged to someone else. We get conveniently overheard conversations and a convenient scene where Idhaya runs through airport security and ends up near the runway where yet another undeclared “love at first sight” is taking off in a plane. But Atharvaa is solid, Preity is solid, and the bright cast and the humour keep us watching. If the director knows one thing, it is this. Keep throwing gags at the audience, and they will forgive most of your sins.
And that’s where Idhayam Murali scores. There are very funny scenes like the one where a class clown solves a problem in tuition class. There are many, many amusing stretches like the one where Idhaya and his friends think they are the only ones invited to a birthday party, and find that even their tuition teacher is there. The 1990s nostalgia stretch with a bunch of kids is lovely. They think kissing results in pregnancy. Again, we laugh. But in her one big scene that encapsulates the crux of the story, Kayadu Lohar shows us what this film could have been. The character she plays has also been unable to express her love. She finally unburdens herself in a most unexpected place during a most unexpected encounter with her former crush. Kayadu is magnificent, her every little expression, her every tear, her every intake of breath building up to the point that some things should never be held back. Had Idhaya been given a few such moments, Idhayam Murali might have been something else. As a member of the audience, I do want to have fun. But I also want the film to explore the topic it’s taken up. Still, I guess one objective out of two is comfortably cleared, and that’s not a bad result!
