Sunday, June 15, 2014

Manjapai

Referred to the yellow bag (Manjapai) is a family entertainment (Tamil) film based on grandfather-grandson relationship. Manjapai is a popular concept used in Tamil cinemas, where the hero or any other characters coming from village to city is often shown carrying a yellow bag. In this film the Manjapai is related to the grandfather character, who comes to the city for the first time to stay with his grandson who is suppose to pursuing career in US.

The film has many funny scenes and light-hearted moments to sit back and relax except for the emotional break up at last. The young actor Vimal had chose to play a software engineer in the film, dream to settle down in US and in a brief time he created the opportunity and working towards achieving his goal. Meanwhile he brings his only grandfather from the village to stay with him until he left to US and his grandfather, being so ignorant, pulled him into lot of trouble which even threatened his US dream.

The veteran Rajkiren has lived as grandfather, not only to Vimal but he reaches up to the audience watching the film! He had played father role in many Tamil films but first time he becomes full-fledged grandfather who rise up his orphaned grandchild single-handedly. He comes as a brisk old man and innocent being, brings out a perfect rustic in his perspective.  The film housed him in an apartment, finds intolerable as his approach seems so naïve and provoking due to the residents indifferent attitude, only make console later when they all miss him to search.

Lakshmi Menon has nothing much to do rather being Vimal’s love affair, enhanced the usual commercial aspects that a heroine deserves at love unrelated subject but she tried to bring some beautiful expressions. Their introduction at the same traffic signal quite bores… I have watched few films in latter year with same situation. What I liked in the film was the emphasis given to relationship and sharing tendency amid neighbors. In today’s apartment culture not many know who’s in next door and coming across a smile is a hard thing, but the grandfather role in the film celebrates their events.

The film shot in and around Chennai has good cinematography and made colorful songs using simple backgrounds. NR Raghunanthan’s music plays a wonderful part of the film, where the expressions were fine tuned in lyrics which are written in an unusually way of later watching the videos. There’s nothing to complain about director (N.Ragavan) who has stitched carefully the yellow bag to bear enough, but what if the bag slipped from the hand is what the ending. Appreciate the team for a decent picture!

P.S. After long time writing a film review, watching it in drive-in last week 

10 comments:

TexWisGirl said...

i hate when movies use the same types of scenes that's been done too many times before. :)

Rajesh said...

This movie sure looks like a entertainer.

George said...

This sounds as if it would be a very enjoyable movie.

Sandhya said...

It is long time since we went to a theatre to watch a movie. I think we should try it now. Thank you, Jeevan!

Destination Infinity said...

The story seems interesting, I want to watch it some day. Thanks for the review :)

Destination Infinity

Betsy Banks Adams said...

Sounds like a great movie.. Bet the boy learned from his Grandfather --and I'll bet that the Grandfather learned from the Boy.....

Hugs,
Betsy

Anonymous said...

Sounds like a fun film.

Unknown said...

You have drive-in movies? I used to love them but most have been pulled down in Canada. The ones that are left are novelties and used mainly for festival weekends.

Unknown said...

You have drive-in movie areas? I used to love them as a kid as we got to stay up late. Most of them have been torn down in Canada except for a few that were kept for use during festival weekends or at old car shows.

Indrani said...

Glad I got to read the review. May be I will watch it if they show on TV.