NANBAN:

The most awaited tamil movie for this Pongal, which is a remake of the blockbuster movie “3 Idiots”, is Nanban. Starring Vijay as Panchavan Parivendan later known to be Kosakhi Pasapugazh, Jiiva as Sevalkodi Senthil, Srikanth as Venkatramakrishnan, Ileana as Ria Santhanam, Satyaraj as Virumandi Santhanam (Virus), Satyan as Srivatsan (Silencer), the movie was directed by Sankar.

 Story line:

The storyline is pretty simple. Vijay, Jiiva and Srikanth join “Ideal Engineering College”. Vijay doing the lead role has a completely different opinion on the current education system and changes the opinion that Jiiva, Srikanth and Satyaraj had about the education system and make them pursue what their heart desires. Also Vijay changes the fortunes of Jiiva, Srikanth, Ileana and the principal of Ideal college, Satyaraj and he makes sure his friends Jiiva and Srikanth get job when they are about to complete their degrees. And finally, Satyaraj is forced to understand his mistake which he did based on his principle of Boy should become an engineer and female child should become a doctor, when his own daughter Ileana explains the reason for his brothers suicide. The complete story is the impact that Vijay had amongst his friends Jiiva and Srikanth. But one would have to accept that the impact that Vijay had on the audience was much more when compared to the impact that he had on his friends in the movie.

Screenplay:

Though the entire movie was a copied content, Sankar made sure there was no scene where tamil audience would feel something was missing from the original content. The picturisation and the way the story was narrated added some flavors to the original recipe.

Music:

After the success of Anniyan, the combination of Harris Jeyaraj and Sankar has come together in this project. And this is the first Vijay movie for which Harris has done the music composure. The background score was a typical Harris touch. “En friend aa pola yaaru machan” song was nice to hear. The rest of the songs were neither too good nor too bad. Overall, the musical score has been above average.

Positives:

• The background score of Harris was a pleasant to watch
• The screenplay and the locations were pleasant and colorful
• The extra humors added were so good and everyone broke into laughter
• It’s really nice to see Vijay without punch dialogues and fights
• The performance of Satyan was a great plus point for this movie. His slang and his modulations were simply superb.

Negatives:

• For those who had already seen the Hindi version of this movie, Vijay would be a disappointment as we tend to compare his performance with that of Amir Khan
• The performance of Ileana has been a great let down. In the entire movie, neither her acting nor her voice was charming.
• The song at the second half of the movie was not too good and I felt that the song could have been avoided.

Though we had mentioned several negatives, the impact that positives had was much more influential than the negatives in the movie. For those who had seen the Hindi version, they might feel the first half a bit dragging. And for those who hasn’t seen the Hindi version will see a complete different Vijay. Overall, this is a complete family entertainer and a must watch movie and a feast for the tamil audience and especially for Vijay fans.