Movie Review : Ammuvaagiya Naan - Quality at its worst

Pic courtesy : Indiaglitz

What would anyone think about a movie which had received good reviews and which was also declared a hit? In behindwoods.com, it was even mentioned that it’s a quality movie and there are rumours that this movie would enter film festivals. Either they were making fun of the movie or trying to play a prank on the readers. The promotions of the movie portrayed only the actress’ ‘talents’ and so I was a bit hesitant to watch it. But after the release, when the reviews came out and also when I found that the movie is a hit, I thought of giving it a chance. Guess what, in my attempt to watch a quality movie, I ended up feeling disgusted sitting for nothing less than a soft-porn and spoiling my weekend.

The movie starts in a sessions court and then goes to flashback through a novel. A woman delivers a baby girl at her home on a rainy night . The mother dies soon after the delivery, the drunken father then sells the infant to Rani(played by Shaari) who is incharge of a brothel. The girl is being brought up in the brothel along with its inmates and the movie credits run simultaneously.. Then from no where, a sleazy item number pops up( I should have understood the ‘quality’ of the movie at this point itself!) and the girl who is named Ammu (new comer Bharathi) is exhibited in front of a few people for bidding. A filthy rich person named Nathan ( Mahadevan) wins the bid but is thrown out of the brothel for being a sadist. It is very predictable at this point of time that he would be taking his revenge when the movie approaches the climax. Enter renowned novelist Gowri Shankar (Parthiban), who had missed a prestigious award twice and his only aim is to win the award. He decides to pen down about people who dedicate their lives to others for his new novel and ends up in the same brothel where Ammu is. Its love at first sight for Parthiban, who starts his novel( titled Ammuvaagiya Naan) and then later decides to marry her. However, Ammu likes her profession (reason: she was brought up in that environment!) and is very much happy with her present life ‘serving’ others. Somehow she gets convinced and ties the knot with Gowri. Then they show her life after wedding which ends up in a horrible climax and that I guess is left for the audience to decide. What I failed to understand is that if Rani had so much of affection towards Ammu and if she could convince her for wedding with just a single sentence why did she let Ammu join the filth? And that too bid her in a way that reminds you of cattle trading??

Parthiban as the saccharine sweet husband is at his usual and has very little to do. I wonder what made an actor of such good caliber to accept this role. New comer Bharathi is good as a debutant, but needs to fine tune the scenes that demands tears. The music by Sabesh Murali is unpleasant to the ears. Thankfully, there are only three songs in the movie. The best part of the movie is its length-- two hours , but the second half moves in a snails pace making you want more intermissions.

I am clueless now as to how Ammu… was referred as a ‘Quality Film’ by the reviewers. If this is what quality means in the Tamil movie industry, the letter q should be replaced with ‘C’; which stands for Crap. Don’t even make an attempt to watch this Ammu even if they show it one day on television for this is definitely not a movie to be watched with your family.