TV Times

TV Times

‘Boys’ going great guns
Director Shankar’s latest coming-of-age extravaganza is complete with technical wizardry, terrific music and a vivacious cast. It packs in quite a lot in terms of “message for the masses”.

Overdone, but relevant. The theme this time? Teen trouble and generation gap.
The media has, over the past couple of months, given quite a bit of space to the film ‘ Boys’ , writing about the money being spent, the “64-odd cameras” effect for a song sequence and of course, A.R. Rahman bouncing back to form. So expectations have been high.

Five fun-loving college goers from different social backgrounds, live it up, wooing girls while not downing a peg or two on the sly or reading porno magazines. They are also musically talented – if one writes poetry, another plays an instrument and the third can sing.

One of them falls in love with the daughter of a rich, status-conscious couple. All hell breaks loose, predictably, and ‘battle lines’ are drawn – parents vs. children. The youngsters walk out of their homes, the lovers get married and the friends vow to make it big together.

The story moves at quite a fast pace till here. Then it meanders, and situations become over-exaggerated and melodramatic. The prison sequence looks contrived. The treatment meted out to Kumar, one of the boys, is unnecessary. And the Mount Road episode is needlessly overblown.

But ‘Boys’ has its moments. It captures the spirit of youth – camaraderie, restlessness, discovery, impulsiveness and love. There are some sensible statements, especially with reference to the subject of sex. When Vivek, who, for once, is serious, says televisions is responsible to a large extent in “corrupting’ young minds, he is not too far from minds, he is not to far from the truth. Only, the scenes could have been handled with lot more subtlety.

All the actors play their parts well, be it the ‘Boys’ – Siddharth, Manikandan, Nakul Jaidev, Bharat Nivas and Sai Srinivas – or Genelia as Harini. Among the others, A.V. Ramanan stands out. But why do artistes like Kalairani settle for such stereotypical roles? All she does is wail.

As for Anita Ratnam, it’s a reprisal of the “Kandukondian…” role. But the show belongs to Vivek. He’s the mouthpiece for the director. Rahaman is at this rocking-best with ‘Girlfriend Vaenum’, Maro Maro’ and ‘Secret of Success (Sa ReGa Mae)’. The song picturisations have the Shankar stamp – all shot on a grand scale. However, the other songs do not impress much.

Ravi K. Chandran’s camera feasts on the lush locales to Tasmania in one song, but beyond the plays a functional role. Sujatha’s dialogue is hard-hitting, but does it have to border on vulgarity? Sabu Cyril comes up trumps with his art direction, especially the MTV awards set.

Shankar’s films are entertainers with a strong social message. ‘Boys’ too has it. With such a powerful theme concept, Shankar could have taken a fresh approach, say on the lines of the Hindi film ‘Dil Chahta hai’. But looks like he was weighed down by the needs to pander to the box-office.

Meanwhile, for the first time in the history of the Indian audio industry, the songs from the combination of Shankar and of A R Rahman for the film ‘Boys’ have been released in the DTS Surround 5.1 Channel home audio format.
Not for nothing is it being touted as Rahman’s “comeback” film. Comeback for Rahman? It is true that Rahman may be a musical genius but he too badly needs a superhit to hit back at critics who believe he is a spent force or he is too busy in Hollywood and Bollywood to give Tamil films his best.

The film is produced by A M Rathnam with a lavish budget and has a popular director Shankar, who knows the pulse of the audience. Surely, Rahman could not have failed this combination – that is the expectation of the film industry and his fans.

Rahman’s songs in ‘Paarthaale Paravasam’, ‘Kannathil Muthamittal’, ‘Baba’ and ‘Kadhal Virus’ were good but they were not exactly the raging chart-busters of the kind that were seen until a few years ago.

In fact, market studies reveal that new music directors like Vidyasagar, Harris Jayaraj, Bharathwaj, Yuvan Shankar Raja and Mani Sarma are doing well and producers are no longer making a bee line for Rahman as they used to in the past. To make matters worse for Rahman, ‘Parasuram’ is considered a musical flop.

It is in this context, that Rahman’s fans have been waiting for ‘Boys’. For, they believe that director Shankar knows how to get the best out of the music director.

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