Jayam Ravi plays a ‘Rules Ramanujam’, always bringing up legal points and trying to do the right thing. After a point, this mega-serial level of superficial drama becomes awfully hard to take.
The best news about Brother is the semi-comeback of Harris Jayaraj. Over the opening credits, we get a lovely tune that goes “En kooda porandha thangame..” Then, of course, there’s the super-catchy Makkamishi. The song would have worked even better had it come later in the narrative, after two or three instances of establishing Karthik’s (Jayam Ravi) character. He is a law student and he is a bit of a ‘Rules Ramanujam’, always bringing up legal points and trying to do the right thing. As he says later, he does what he feels is right, but he doesn’t think about how his actions could affect others. His father has a heart attack, his sister (Bhumika Chawla) has marital issues in a super-disciplined family where everyone’s into prestige and fame – and Karthik is at the centre of it all.
There is a good one-line in a sister trying to help her wayward brother and the brother, in turn, trying to help the sister. But Rajesh M rarely thinks beyond the one-line. The screenplay bounces around with random scenes, there is no consistent tonality, and even potentially funny bits (like the one where MS Baskar plays a hypnotist) end up flat. The one good thing is that a woman in a traditional household stands up for herself, but this plot point, too, sounds better than the way it plays out. The heroine, Priyanka Mohan, is as generic as everything else, everyone else. (Luckily, there’s no major duet.) But the bigger issue is that Brother is steeped in old-fashioned tearjerker sentimentality, and after a point, this mega-serial level of superficial drama becomes awfully hard to take.
Many of the laughs in Brother are unintentional. One such instance is when we learn the truth about Karthik’s birth. The other is when we realise the mastermind behind an abduction. The stage play-type staging extends to an actual stage play at a school, where a family is reunited. This is cause for more unintentional laughs. Rao Ramesh plays the villain, whose ego is a big reason for many of the things that happen. His lines are so bland that the dialogues don’t seem to have seen a second draft. The same could be said for the movie. It looks shoddy, like it was rushed into production after one day of pre-production. No one seems to care about anything. You could argue that films like Brother are essentially a “product”, and meant for undemanding viewers. But surely even the most undemanding viewer cannot be… this undemanding!
