Maanga

Even as a comedian, Premgi Amaren is funny mostly in his brother, Venkat Prabhu's films. His style primarily involves referencing movies in a comic manner. He tries the same in Maanga, his first film as a hero, as well, but the effect is far from amusing. The film feels like a hodgepodge of movie references, bad science (like fart bombs and erectile dysfunction-curing drugs), and lazily written jokes put together in a manner that is hardly competent. The jokes are actually cringe-worthy most of the time — When a character asks, "Body-a erikkanuma podhaikkanuma?", another replies, "Thovaikkanum". And when someone says "Vayithula puzhu poochi kooda illa", we get the cliched retort, "Adhu nalladudhaane". The jokes are that old. Even a boring episode of Lollu Sabha would contain more jokes than anything we find here. Perhaps that is why the director felt the need to introduce a ghost, indicating once again that current Tamil cinema trusts the spirits even more than a medium. So, we get another Premgi — this time, as a ghost. But this move also has one silver lining as it shows that not every film with ghost can become a success. As for Premgi, he is in almost every frame and gamely tries to liven up things but with hardly anything to latch his movie references (ranging from Nenjam Marappathillai to Endhiran) on to, his shtick soon becomes tiresome. As we exit the theatre, our only reaction is to exclaim the actor's most popular punchline: 'Enna koduma sir idhu!'