Pari Elavazhagan is a Telugu youth with a caste-obsessed mother, and Ramya Ranganathan plays the “liberated” Anglo-Indian he falls for. A few laughs apart, the film is all over the place, with the hero landing in one contrived predicament after another. That’s the quick review. A more detailed analysis follows, and it may contain spoilers.
Just a while ago, in Idhayam Murali, we had a leading man who had a problem with telling a woman that he loved her. Now, in Pari Elavazhagan’s Anbe Diana, the director plays Krishna, a Telugu boy in love with an Anglo-Indian girl named Magic (Ramya Ranganathan). He loves her. She seems to like him as a friend. But one day, she says she loves him back. And he panics. At that point, he becomes afraid about her “suitability”. He begins to worry whether Magic will fit into his home, with her tendency to freely hug people and wear short dresses and have a casual drink or two. Worse, what will he tell his caste-obsessed mother, played by Roja! So he decides it’s best he ditches her. He gets engaged to a demure, caste-appropriate girl. And after this engagement, Krishna realises he wants Magic. By that time, you have lost any kind of investment in this man’s so-called plight, and you want both women (Magic, and the one Krishna gets engaged to) to find a better man.
Now, if you want to make a drama around this situation, I can understand. We all do horrible things at times, without thinking about the repercussions. Maybe Krishna fell for Magic just because she looked so beautiful, and later, reality kicked in. And if Krishna had suffered for his wavering mind, for wanting a woman he was not really ready for, you can at least borderline care for him. But Anbe Diana wants to be a broad, loud comedy. Everything that Krishna does is treated like a joke, with Parithabangal Gopi chipping in. Krishna doesn’t even have that trope-friend who might act as a conscience and say that he is not doing the right thing. Nothing in this film, set in Perambur, is detailed with any kind of conviction. The writing is basic, and often quite random in the way it thinks up obstacles for our leading man. Krishna’s background as an athlete, his father’s tendency to hang out with friends, Magic’s belief in Jesus, her modelling background – you could cut out all of this and the film would not change one bit.
Pari Elavazhagan’s debut feature was Jama, a 2024 drama about a street-theatre troupe. It had its rough edges, but it also had more heart and ambition than most Tamil movies we usually get. It was a sensitive story, and it had a great role for Chetan. Anbe Diana gives Chetan some solid laughs, but it has zero sensitivity. It treats Anglo-Indians as though they only say “bugger” and “child”, and offer only whiskey and brandy to guests. There’s a part where Krishna and Magic decide to learn about each other’s cultures, and even this is so superficial. The film also has an autism angle, but again, this is connected to a father who is a mama’s boy. No one in this movie seems capable of an actual, real-sounding conversation. Comedy grounded in reality is one of the toughest things to write – but then, some of you might say that this film isn’t even going for reality. Either way, Anbe Diana is a silly movie with a few big laughs towards the end. But by then, you may be too exhausted to care.
