Vaathi movie review: Director Venky Atluri’s ‘Vaathi’ begins with an intriguing premise but then falls flat with an uneven screenplay. Even the star presence of Dhanush fails to contribute much.
There is a pattern soon after Venky Atluri’s film opens Vaathi and its shadow travels throughout the film. The beginning is nonchalant, sober. In 2022, three boys discover a box of video cassettes. They play the video and we see the back of a teacher writing some trigonometry sums on a blackboard. It’s Dhanush (of course) and he even turns towards the camera for a brief half-second. The coveted mass introduction shot goes poof. Does half a second count? The mystery of the cassettes takes the boys to a District Collector’s office, and Venky once again shows Dhanush, looking straight at us from a picture on the wall.
Subdued energy
Venky’s casual use of songs in the first half also carries this subdued energy. The fine dancer in Dhanush takes a step back when there is no set-up for the first song; he walks down a street and shakes a leg casually which no one notices. And in the middle of the romantic track Vaa Vaathi, Venky tells about how a school becomes a temple for the marginalised communities who are not allowed inside temples.
Unfortunately, Vaathi is full of one-off ideas that immediately find their evil twin. That is, the film keeps subtracting itself by adding things unnecessarily.
The setting of the film is the ‘90s in a town called Sozhavaram on the Tamil Nadu-Andhra Pradesh border. Dhanush’s character Balamurugan, an assistant teacher at a private school called Thirupathi Coaching Centre, is a full-time mathematics teacher in a government school in Sozhavaram. This happens after the government’s deal with TCC head Srinivasa Thirupathi (Samuthirakani). Thirupathi, however, has his own agenda. He sends these “third-grade” teachers to government schools to ensure that his own students come on top.
Undemanding screenplay
In Vaathi the hero finds small means to win big, but the undemanding screenplay offers only a few pay-offs.
The film is also full of unidimensional characters that show potential initially. The characters played by Tanikella Bharani, Hareesh Peradi Ken Karunas and Samyuktha are rendered deadweight. One feels bad for Dhanush because he tries to single-handedly support the film even in its middling portions. Unfortunately, there isn’t enough on paper to help him.
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