Kana Kandein (Tamil) (Title Translation: “Had a dream” or “I dreamed”)Starring: Srikanth, Gopika, Vivek and others
The story revolves around the life a young man, Chemistry Ph.D from Anna University, striving to develop his Ph.D thesis into a product/service that will help transform the lives of the common man. The problem he is trying to solve (for the benefit of Silicon Valley types!) is the water problem in Madras. De-salination is the solution according to him. The secret sauce? He has developed his own formula for how to do this at a low cost! He needs investment to realize this dream. And guess what, there are investors interested in buying him out. Start-up ideas storm Kollywood or what? Well, in case you thought this was a Silicon Valley thriller, wait till you read the rest.
A childhood sweet heart is thrown into the mix. Then there is living together and pre-marital sex (and no Khusboo is not the heroine!) thrown in. Of course, there are a few duets and one cabaret type (“club dance” as it was known in the past!) song. There is some cool tech stuff — computers of course, cameras that record all activities in an office, content stored on hard drives to be copied on to CDs by the hero etc. etc. Then, there is Vivek with his standard comedy (I have seen this guy in a few films, and he seems to do the same thing in every film — friend of the hero, generally hangs out, cracks a few jokes, imitates a few people famous personalities, gets into trouble with his spouse after BS-ing her etc. etc) that does produce a few laughs but is a highly modularized plug-in for the film. His entire part could have been cut and paste in another film with little damage to either film!
Last but not the least, there is a villain too. Prithviraj (son of the late mallu movie star, Sukumaran), a Malayalam movie import plays the role of the villain. He has a strong mallu accent and plenty of English dialogues thrown in to make his life easier. He plays a fixer/financier in the film who tampers with contracts and makes life miserable for his clients. He does the same to the hero and ends up in a few stunts sequences until good prevails over evil in a grande finale as always!
Firstly, hats off to the movie makers for coming up with a “different” idea for the film. In the midst of the boom happening in India, this theme is certainly apt for the times. But the movie makers didn’t want to focus exclusively on this core idea but instead chose to be “all things to all people” clearly with an eye on the box office. Nevertheless, the movie is certainly watchable. Vidyasar’s music in this film is pretty average. All the actors do justice to their roles.
Pakora Korner 