Assault

I was in Pondicherry last weekend. Due to peer pressure, I very reluctantly went for a new Tamil movie. First five minutes into what the media called the latest blockbuster, my head went dizzy at the amount of noise blared through the speakers. I quickly ran out, went to a nearby medical store, picked up a cotton roll, went back in, took a couple of pieces and and stuffed them heavily in my ears. This, to some extent managed the noise problem.

Alas, there's no such cotton available for the eyes. The movie is already declared superhit and its director is touted to be the next Mani Ratnam. It had a very wavering script knitted with some very foolish scenes and some mindless, heart-numbing stunt scenes. Nobody explains why something is happening on the screen. A scene is there merely because it looks good and offers some entertainment for that moment. Thanks to the audio volume and also to some unimaginative sound mixing, all voice levels are equalized to the same sound output (including the BGM) and all characters speak in unmodulated, insensitive tones. The scenes and developments are identified only through the characaters themselves. Good guy, good girl, semi-good (glamourous) girl, and of course the bad guy. The result was a very unimaginative, loud, garish presentation of what the media calls a slick, taut presentation. Somewhere along, I figured that even a plagiarised story doesn't seem to help lift the movie, so I tried hard to sleep in the hall, with some little success though. Nevertheless, when the trauma ended, walked out of the hall with a mild headache.

They say that bad movies are an insult to your intelligence. I guess they not just that. They are an assault on your sensibilities.