After seeing Anniyan, in which Vikram portrayed 3 different roles as split personalities of the same person, one could be forgiven for thinking "What else can Vikram do now?" The answer comes in the form of Majaa, a fun-filled clean family oriented entertainer, rural based, and quite different from the earlier magnum opus of Vikram. There were thoughts of changing the name of the movie, since Majaa carries other connotations also. But the name was not changed and the it lives up top its name and the expectations of Vikram's fans. It is clean fun, an entertainer through and through, with a rural background, and dream sequences in Austria, best appreciated on the big screen, drowned in the sound.
Many cine-goers and pundits were of the fixed opinion that after Sivaji Ganesan, only Kamal Haasan would dare to take up totally different and challenging roles. Vikram proves the pundits wrong; after the 3 totally different roles in Anniyan, he plays a role which is different from all these three roles, the role of a happy-go-lucky semi-literate person (4th standard pass) with a heart of gold, who speaks with his fists and through his heart.
In short, the movie is about two orphaned wayward boys are brought up by a kindly person. All the three are notorious rogues and thieves. They grow up to as Vikram and Pasupathy. Overnight, they decide to become honest, change their ways from hardly-working to hard-working, and earn their livelihoods. They buy an old lorry as their means of livelihood. The lorry breaks down in a remote area, Pasupathy steals food, which turns out to be poisoned, but expectedly, nobody dies of this poisoning. They shift residence, get involved in the lives of the local people there, save lives, help others as good Samaritans, Vikram has a tiff with Asin, who happens to be the only daughter of the local zamindar, become the local version of Robin Hood, and so on, with fights, spicy dialogues, comedy, etc. Asin is a girl with a heart of gold, out to help the villagers, and she admires Vikram for his actions. She accepts him even when he tells her about his criminal past. Twists and turns, misunderstandings between lead actors, fights, reconciliation and climax ? all have been provided. It is a humorous entertainer shot in a rural background, and the ambience has been well brought out. Songs are melodious and shot well.
It is a light comedy, a remake of the Malayalam hit Thommanum Makkalum. The director of the original, Shafi, wields the megaphone for this movie also, his first foray into Tamil. The heroine is Asin, acting opposite Vikram for the first time. Pasupathy, Vadivel, Manivannan, Vijayakumar, Muthukalai and others are the supporting cast. Music is by Vidyasagar, editing by V.T. Vijayan and Art by M. Prabhakar.
The movie is being released simultaneously in Tamil and Telugu and will be released all over the south on 1st. November. For more details, and to see the movie stills, click here to visit the movie site maintained by galatta.com