Dum Dum Dum Review

Ours is a world where people don't know what they want and are willing to go through hell to get it, said Don Marquis - and so the characters in the one seem to believe. The way that they change their minds over each new idea that pops up is to be seen to be believed. The number of twists in the film could give the road from Tirupati to Tirumala a run for its money - any more turns in this roller-coaster ride, and you'd be throwing up in the aisle.

Aditya (Madhavan) and Ganga (Jyothika) are engaged to each other without knowing anything about each other, courtesy their parents who are very good friends and want to extend their friendship to the proverbial relationship. Now, both Aditya and Ganga have their own ambitions - Aditya, a lawyer, wants to have fun in life, and Ganga wants to complete her engineering. So they decide to derail the marriage some way or the other.

And on that pretext, you are shown a lot of scenes that are supposed to be funny but only make your face screw up in a grimace. In the process, they predictably actually fall in love, and decide to go ahead with the wedding.

But as luck would have it, there is a minor skirmish between the parents, and the wedding is called off. Ganga is sent to Chennai to study engineering, and stays with her father's friend, who incidentally happens to be a lawyer. This considerably influences Aditya to become the lawyer's junior, and the battle to convince the parents successfully overcomes the various twists thrown in by the director.

Not much of a tale, is it? Well, that's the whole problem - this age-old story has been rehashed and dished out messily, and the whole movie runs solely on the screenplay. This is clearly not something you'd expect from the stables of Mani Ratnam, and that's the biggest disappointment.

Technically the movie is sound, of course, with some very decent camerawork. The only flaw in that aspect is that the secret comes out very easily. A point I always had to make about dubbed movies (this is a Tamil flick), is the poor importance paid to lip sync in general, and that spoils the feel for you in an already ordinary film.

Acting wise, the performances are quite decent, with both Madhavan and Jyothika emoting well. The other characters all have minor roles, and hence their performances are of no consequence. One big relief is the absence of a separate comedy track - the comedy is purely situational, making this look like a normal tale. Mention has to be made of the painful performance of Vivek - he gags you with his overacting.

The music is delightful, with some innovative work by Karthik Raja. Noteworthy in the music is the importance given to the singer - in an age where the human voice is relegated to the background of all the computer induced sounds, there is something fresh about the way that human voice is used here.

The movie is a hangover of Sakhi, but might still be worth a watch.