July 4, 2015

Kangaroo is about a man's excessive affection for his sister and given Samy's earlier track record with films that had incest as the theme (Uyir and Sindhu Samaveli), this one too could have turned into something similar, but this time, the director changes track just a bit and ensures that things stay well within the line of accepted social mores. Instead of an incestuous character, we get an extremely possessive one. The character of Kangaroo, … read the rest.

Kangaroo is about a man's excessive affection for his sister and given Samy's earlier track record with films that had incest as the theme (Uyir and Sindhu Samaveli), this one too could have turned into something similar, but this time, the director changes track just a bit and ensures that things stay well within the line of accepted social mores. Instead of an incestuous character, we get an extremely possessive one. The character of Kangaroo, at least initially, seems like that of the ruffian with a golden heart — a little bit of Paruthiveeran, Ayyanar from Samy's own Mirugam and Mayandi from En Rasavin Manasile (we even get a scene where Kangaroo eats like Rajkiran in that film). And there is an element of brute force even in the way he expresses his love for his sister — he breaks the TV set when he sees that she has cut her fingers while watching TV, he beats up Ticket and his accomplice who try to misbehave with her and he even makes her eat by blackmailing that he will cut his head off if she doesn't! There is melodrama here but not like what we are used to in films like Paasa Malar and Kizhakku Seemayile.

But then, the two men who agree to marry Azhagu die due to freak accidents — first, Mani, the guy she loves (their romance is solely built on the fact that they are both fans of actor Ajith) takes a tumble from the hilltop, and then, Karunakaran, the guy who they try to get her married to dies from an accident involving a live wire. Still, Azhagu gets a wedding but someone makes an attempt on the life of her husband Ganesan. And that is when Samy gives us a twist so ridiculous that turns this film from being just a relationship drama into a murder mystery involving schizophrenia. It is an interesting development, sure, but staged rather incompetently that it only ends up as an unconvincing twist. And to make things even weirder, we get a backstory gives a murder touch to this tale. The premise does raise an interesting psychological question — is our love for another human being mainly a function of our need to be connected or can there be truly selfless love — but this filmmaker and the film fail to explore it.

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