PULI - Ilayathalapathy VIJAY| Sruthi Haasan | Sudeep | Chimbudevan | DSP |

[Dammy R]

Cedy... Very well articulated review. Spoke my mind in your review...I was going to write one up as well after this initial splur of reactions ease out after Sunday.

To be honest, as much as I also found the movie to be average, which I mentioned here after I watched the movie, I totally disagree with some of the comments here around Vijays body language and dialogue delivery. Yes the punch lines in the very brief flashback did seem over the top, but when I saw it first time, those scenes got the maximum cheers from the front benchers, which is exactly what CD and Vijay would have wanted. When I watched it the second time, I found those to be a bit odd myself, but like you said, it was a brief 10 to 15 minute flashback.

Coming to body language, I seriously don't understand what the issue is. Getting the body language and mannerisms etc accurate is of utmost importance if its a historical movie, which is where my disagreement is. This IS NOT a historical movie...its a fantasy movie. Which means you can take cinematic liberties, and not look for perfection and correctness of characters, their attire, and mannerisms. Vijay uses very typical mannerisms for comedy scenes (which he did even in Kaththi), and some of us do find it odd, but that's done purely for his kid audience. The mannerisms that he uses for punch lines which do look over the top are for those front benchers, who didn't like Nanban for this exact same reason. Vijay cannot play the Kaththi Jeevanandham character in every movie, can he? He has a variety in his audience base and sometimes he falls prey to that temptation. Let's learn to accept some of these minor flaws and admire the other majority of what he does to entertain us.

As for the political dialogues, I sincerely think we, as his fans, are the ones to be blamed here for taking it way too seriously. This is a story about a kingdom, a queen, a princess, with him playing a prince. I didn't find those dialogues out of place at all. Just cos it's Vijay and his strong aspirations about getting into politics (not sure if he still harbors that interest), we tend to relate everything he says to this aspiration. And even if it is true, so be it. Some of us may not like that decision and some of us may welcome it. As long as he continues to entertain us, we should just give him his space and focus on him being a hero. Fans of Chiru or Pawan Kalyan don't do this nor do their films get into trouble for mouthing such dialogues. Why is it that only in TN we see such instances and that too mainly for Vijay (there are instances of couple other stars, but for Vijay it's becoming a routine..for his movies to land into release troubles).

I still stick to my individual feeling about the movie that the screenplay did feel dragging, especially the first 30 mts... And couple of songs were definitely speed-breakers. I even mentioned the same in my day 1 review. Vijay has to be applauded for his guts to sign such a project at a stage when he was in form...he could've easily signed even someone like Hari and given a masala movie and delivered a hit but he didn't.

Personally, I feel the biggest issue with his hardcore fans and us is that 2 of his biggest blockbusters have come in the last 4 years with ARM and we expect the same output even from the likes of Neason and ChimbuDevan..which is unfair.

Again, these are just my thoughts and my opinion...wasn't intended to offend anyone here.. I am sure a few of you would disagree with my thoughts too, which is fine

Let's just hope that Puli sails through into the safe zone in the coming few days.

Cheers!!!