Sema Botha Aagatha Tamil Movie
Director Badri Venkatesh who happened to debut with "Baana Kaathadi" has once again joined hands with Atharva through "Semma Botha Aagatha". The movie largely appeared to strike a balance between satire and thrills aided by quite a few funny lines. But, was it the kind of cocktail that the director attempted to serve or did he dwindle and fall down because of a stupified story and screenplay that dragged and led us nowhere in the second half?
The movie started off slowly with a run-of-the-mill bar scene where Atharva unloads a baggage of rant due to a break up with his girlfriend (Mishti) to Karunakaran, who is, of course, one of the favourite sidekicks in Kollywood today. Karuna decides to "set" him up with a hooker to "mend" things. Then there arises a "Panchathanthiram" laced situation wherein Atharva gets entangled with the death (murder) of the hooker. Did he manage to get out of this soup?
Well, the movie had its fair share of whacks and quirks. Especially the dialogues had some genuinely funny lines from Karunakaran, who rendered it with perfect timing! But everything else about the movie was more than goofy. Especially, a leading man who takes a drive to Palakkad overnight to uncover the truth about the death of a hooker whom he wants to get away with was a terrible thing to digest.
On his way, he meets a cop (MS Bhaskar) at a brothel who is so cool and pats him to go ahead and succeed as if one is appearing to take an exam. But actors like MS Bhaskar can pull off even something that could be so unconvincing merely with their ability to see through a character and an unparalleled dialogue delivery. And that too, MS Bhaskar renders everything in Malayalam!!
Then, there were these funny villains led by John Vijay and company (strangely Yogi Babu was notoriously sidelined on screen). They were funny, but again, if one could convince a baddie to untie him for the love of "Raja sir", then the narrative walks on thin ice.
Though there were some genuine opportunities to create humour, the movie failed to capitalize and wavered without any clear goal. Mishti, the Bengal beauty had that typical "other language" girl's symptoms of an awry lip sync and artificially made up body language.
Yuvan seems to be offbeat, while the titular song, "Semma Botha Aagatha" that plays during an action block was one of the few bits that worked. Atharva delivered his usual mediocre performance with a voice that doesn't seem to have fully cracked.
The movie, as well as the director of "Semma Botha Aagatha", appear to be confused and have neither delivered a thriller nor a satire. What seemed like a promising start, mellowed down with the progress and ended up as a meaningless drag. Still waiting for Atharva to deliver the goods. Better luck next time!!
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