Thalaivii reviews and box office - Page 7

I am not able to find the movie on Netflix in my country😕

Originally posted by: priya185

I am not able to find the movie on Netflix in my country😕

It only sold to Netflix for the Hindi version (and I assume area) since it sold to Amazon for the south and I think Zee got international rights. The later two I think come after 4 weeks.

Thalaivii, Now On Netflix, Is A Terrible Ode To A Cultural Superstar (filmcompanion.in)

Thalaivii, Now On Netflix, Is A Terrible Ode To A Cultural Superstar

The film's Hindi version, now available on streaming, doesn’t suffer from an identity crisis so much as an all-out quality crisis

• POSTED ON SEPTEMBER 25, 2021
• 5 MINUTE READ
• BY RAHUL DESAI

Director: Vijay
Cast: Kangana Ranaut, Arvind Swami, Nassar, Raj Arun, Samuthirakani, Jisshu Sengupta
Writers: K.V. Vijayendra Prasad, Rajat Arora, Madhan Karky
Cinematography: Vishal Vittal
Edited by: Ballu Saluja
Streaming on: Netflix

I do not need to know about the history of Tamil politics and Tamil cinema to tell you that Thalaivii is an objectively terrible film. A dramatized take on the rise of six-time Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa – from professional actress to conflicted lover to ‘mother’ of the masses – the film doesn’t suffer from an identity crisis so much as an all-out quality crisis. Context is irrelevant when a primitive form of storytelling hijacks the guise of masala movie-making. When did masala become so unpalatable? I thought the whole point of entertainment was to adapt and engage, not regress into a time capsule of bland montages, kindergarten-level writing, simplistic staging and meta-awful acting. The Hindi version, now streaming on Netflix, is likely worse because of the obvious cultural dissonance. Sometimes, mediocrity transcends language and taste barriers. For this, I’m eternally grateful to titles like Thalaivii. It makes my job easier.

I don’t expect authenticity from movies about famous and flawed people. It would be unfair to. But I do expect a sense of intellectual honesty and curiosity. It’s the how that matters more than the what. And the ‘how’ of Thalaivii made me ask why rather than why not. (Apologies for the adverb avalanche, but why is this an acceptable mainstream movie?). Thalaivii may not be a biopic, it may not even be a tragic love story or a woman empowerment tale – or it may be all at once – yet it reduces a full journey to a hagiographic mirage of tonally disparate bullet points. Paying homage to an iconic leader is normal, but repeatedly exploiting the integrity of art to do so is offensive. The makers here assume that riffing on real-life images and instances – like Jayalalithaa comparing herself to Draupadi after being manhandled at the Legislative Assembly, her car accident, her Rajya Sabha speech in front of Indira Gandhi, her face at the MGR funeral, and so on – is enough to justify its feature-length loudness. Surely, there has to be more. Surely, there has to be something between heavenly protagonists and hellish villains. Apparently not.

For example, the deification of M.G. Ramachandran (an agelessly inert Arvind Swami) felt like I was being narrated old Sai Baba stories by my grandmother – and not in a nice, nostalgic way. Early on, the halo-sporting legend attends to an injured extra on the set by assuring him that they will shoot the scene when he is fine: “You can be replaced, but when will you get to work with me again?” Naturally, Jaya is watching, and his arrogant modesty wins her over. When it’s suggested that he star opposite a 19-year-old Jaya as a 50-year-old hero, he nobly expresses his reservations about the age-gap at first, before giving in. This is 2021 after all, so what if he is speaking from the 1960s? The campy parts of them acting in movies together – portions that could have been playful and visually quirky – ooze the energy of a broken camera. A song tells us they’re in love. A song tells us she is heartbroken. A song tells us she is grieving. A song tells us she is pining, determined, elated and victorious. Even those typically kitschy Rajat Arora dialogues sound like songs: “politics aur pyaar mein koi antar nahi hai: dikhana aasaan hai aur nibhaana mushkil.”

The final shot looks like the culmination of a supervillain origin story, such is the film’s narrative disintegration of time and space. Years and hours pass with the same ferocity. Through it all, Raj Arjun’s rendition of party rival R.M. Veerappan remains laughably terse – a decent actor on his day, he spends too long trying to ape and look like Piyush Mishra in order to pass off as a real, venomous human being. It doesn’t help that he speaks into the vacuum, to nobody in particular, to express his scheming mind and cult-like devotion – a retro style device that deserves no role in modern storytelling.

Thanks to the greedy myth-building, it’s also hard to distinguish between the lead-up (the in-between scenes, the exposition, the conversations and vivid facial expressions) and the crescendo (the speeches, meltdowns, slow-motion strides). As a result, there are many potentially winsome moments that are marred by bad writing. For instance, Jaya’s entry into politics is constructed through a scene of two hungry village kids who imagine their stale food as tasty dishes, with a violin begging us to be moved by this poverty-p... treatment. These same kids can be seen dancing with joy once she takes charge of the Mid-Day meal scheme and is called ‘Amma’ lovingly by one of them. When she takes the Rajya Sabha by storm and earns the attention of PM Indira Gandhi, the camera fixates on Indira’s emotional face, which in turn leads to a Congress alliance less than a minute later. By the time we realize the magnitude of Jaya’s success, the moment has passed in order to accommodate another one – and another, and another. By the end, the tacky physical transformation is the least of the film’s crimes.

A lot of the film’s problems stem from Kangana Ranaut’s disjointed and screechy performance. The initial portions – of Jaya as an upcoming movie star – are a far cry from her similar turn in Rangoon, instead invoking the early years of the actress’ troubled-mistress on-screen stereotype. Every emotion now looks like a statement, and this in turn has turned the modern-day Kangana Ranaut into more of a symbol than an artist. Her reaction shots are specifically poor here, almost as though we can sense that she is acting only for a bandwidth of a shot and not an entire narrative. It consequently feels like Jayalalithaa is playing Ranaut and not the other way around – especially in scenes where she valiantly defies producers’ attempts to derail her film career, clowns around in the Egyptian costumes from Kaavalkaaran, and vows eternal vengeance on the Karunanidhi-led all-male opposition. I’m not saying Ranaut should resemble the person she’s playing, but precious little about this effort looks in service to a woman. It looks in service to the woman. And her name is not Jayalalithaa. It might never be.

Aishwarya was perfect for the role. It was Jayalalita's wish.

Kangana was miscast.

🤣🤣

Lol. her begging doesn’t ever stop. 😆

Meanwhile ‘Love story’, a telugu film, is creating ripples in the industry. It has proved that for good content and real stardom, people are willing to come back to the theaters.

Originally posted by: springkissed

People giving reviews after watching 10-15 minutes of film. Not even trying to hide how biased they are. What a waste of energy!

If this was for me then I would reinstate that even after 2.5 hours of the film, my view remains the same- It is one hell of a cringe fest like those hindi dubbed Telugu movies on Zee Cinema and Sony Max. Any cineliterate person can easily gauge the tone and treatment of a movie within the first 15-20 mins esp if it's as loud as the opening assembly scene and as cringey as the chali chali song, so don't really get where biasedness comes into picture. One just needs to watch more films, that's it. 🤪

Anyways more about the film, to me it was pretty pointless to make a bilingual film on Jaya. They could've just made a Tamil film only and dubbed Kangana's parts because the hindi version that I saw had some serious sync issues. They have kept Kangana's parts in Hindi while most of the supporting cast parts look dubbed from the Tamil version into Hindi. Plus for someone who has zero knowledge about Jaya-MGR jodi and their magic on screen in Tamil cinema, it was plain boring to see the first half just revolve around their romance and nothing else. Everything in the film looks incomplete and unimpressive. The writing is all over the place, so is the music. Randomly we get to see some Tamil numbers appearing and disappearing in between a hindi romantic song plus the female singer's voice will grate your ears, esp in Chali Chali 😵

The whole film is disjointed and looks direction less. Pretty sure it's because of the language barrier because I've heard the Tamil version is better than the hindi version. Thankfully the second half is slightly better since they start focussing on Jaya's political journey. But again, as usual the problem with massy Tamil cinema, the protagonist's treatment is like a masala film hero. Some generic seeti maaro lines, loud BGM and slow motion walking away. I think the only part I really liked in the film is MGR's funeral scene, that's it.

And now coming to Kangana, looks like after being the new 'nationalist' in town, she has completely forgotten her subtle acting skills. First Manikarnika and now this, her performance is unnecessarily loud and theatrical. She shines in the silences like the funeral scene and some parts towards the end where you get to see the old terrific Kangana but then she opens her mouth and all goes down the drain thanks to her horrible dialogue delivery and the lisp problem, especially in the election rally scenes. She tries way too hard to act cutesy and pass off as 16 year old Jaya in the first half. Plus, terrible TERRIBLE makeup and prosthetics. But thankfully nothing scary like the film announcement video 😆

The only things I probably liked in the film are the costumes and the background score but except for that it looked like a hollow film. Felt too much money has been invested but not too much of brain and creativity.

Also the film ends immediately as soon as Jaya becomes the CM. Like WTF. 2.5 hours and they show only last 15 mins of her as the CM? What about the scams and controversies she was involved in? What about the Amma meals and other things she launched in Tamil Nadu? That's the real meat and not that silly MGR-Jaya love story. Add to that a TERRIBLE Bharatnatyam performance by a non dancer like Kangana with ear grating vocals by the same singer.🤡

Also god knows when will some of these directors down South will start shooting sync sound and get done with dubbing once and for all. Looks like they just don't know how to shoot sync sound, dubbing kills the mood of the scene since none of the actors in this generation are good at dubbing!

Originally posted by: MommaDarling

Anyways more about the film, to me it was pretty pointless to make a bilingual film on Jaya. They could've just made a Tamil film only and dubbed Kangana's parts because the hindi version that I saw had some serious sync issues. They have kept Kangana's parts in Hindi while most of the supporting cast parts look dubbed from the Tamil version into Hindi. Plus for someone who has zero knowledge about Jaya-MGR jodi and their magic on screen in Tamil cinema, it was plain boring to see the first half just revolve around their romance and nothing else. Everything in the film looks incomplete and unimpressive. The writing is all over the place, so is the music. Randomly we get to see some Tamil numbers appearing and disappearing in between a hindi romantic song plus the female singer's voice will grate your ears, esp in Chali Chali 😵

The whole film is disjointed and looks direction less. Pretty sure it's because of the language barrier because I've heard the Tamil version is better than the hindi version. Thankfully the second half is slightly better since they start focussing on Jaya's political journey. But again, as usual the problem with massy Tamil cinema, the protagonist's treatment is like a masala film hero. Some generic seeti maaro lines, loud BGM and slow motion walking away. I think the only part I really liked in the film is MGR's funeral scene, that's it.

And now coming to Kangana, looks like after being the new 'nationalist' in town, she has completely forgotten her subtle acting skills. First Manikarnika and now this, her performance is unnecessarily loud and theatrical. She shines in the silences like the funeral scene and some parts towards the end where you get to see the old terrific Kangana but then she opens her mouth and all goes down the drain thanks to her horrible dialogue delivery and the lisp problem, especially in the election rally scenes. She tries way too hard to act cutesy and pass off as 16 year old Jaya in the first half. Plus, terrible TERRIBLE makeup and prosthetics. But thankfully nothing scary like the film announcement video 😆

The only things I probably liked in the film are the costumes and the background score but except for that it looked like a hollow film. Felt too much money has been invested but not too much of brain and creativity.

Also the film ends immediately as soon as Jaya becomes the CM. Like WTF. 2.5 hours and they show only last 15 mins of her as the CM? What about the scams and controversies she was involved in? What about the Amma meals and other things she launched in Tamil Nadu? That's the real meat and not that silly MGR-Jaya love story. Add to that a TERRIBLE Bharatnatyam performance by a non dancer like Kangana with ear grating vocals by the same singer.🤡

She looked like a 45 year old amma in that song while trying to be a 16 year old angsty teenager, and what dancing? Most of the time she was just posing around awkwardly. 😆