Fine enter­tain­ment from the Sharks and Rock­ers teams.

When did you laugh out loud while watch­ing a movie ? If you can’t remem­ber, just watch this movie, even if you have watched it already. Luck­ily, in Tamil cin­ema indus­try, we have so many good films based on humour. One such gem is ‘Chen­nai — 600028′.

I still won­der the guts of Venkat prabhu and SPCha­ran to con­vince SPB to pro­duce this movie. Either they have nar­rated him and explained extremely well or they just gave a try. I would rather assume the first one, as the script is so con­vinc­ing to believe what­ever shown on screen.

The movie starts with SPB’s voice over giv­ing an an intro­duc­tion about gully cricket and what can be expected from the movie. [ as in NILA NIZHAL novel by Sujatha — He once vis­ited Sri­na­gar and observed kids play­ing cricket on a frozen lake. That inspired him to write a novel with cricket back­ground and of course he was a good player too ].

Story

Cricket is the life of the story, with 2 rival teams [ Sharks and Rock­ers ] involved in it. Rock­ers Raghu moves from Roy­a­pu­ram to Visalak­shi thot­tam [ Sun­nambu kaal­vaai ]. The cricket ground rivalry gets in to the ground as well as their per­sonal lives.What hap­pens then is the story. As SPB nar­rates in the begin­ning, the friends go through inti­mate friend­ship, love, joy­ful moments, rivalry, dances, cel­e­bra­tion, fights, prob­lems and above all CRICKET.

At one time or the other, we all have played cricket [ at least book cricket :) ] or been to ground say­ing so. With cricket as the main ingre­di­ent, the writer slowly assem­bled the story in bits and pieces. In fact, its a com­bi­na­tion of events rather than a story with some pur­pose. Hats off to the script and dia­logues [ not only Venkat Prabhu — his asso­ciate Saseed­ha­ran and Sri­pa­thy — always repect the team work ]. The beauty of the nar­ra­tion is that all the prime char­ac­ters were intro­duced in the first 12 mins of the movie.

The first credit goes to SPB who took a bold deci­sion to pro­duce this movie. The sports movies are always told seri­ously in most of the cases. First time, they have com­bined cricket and humour. We have watched vari­ety of humour rang­ing from Kali N Rath­nam to ‘lollu sabha’ san­thanam. This type of humour doesn’t fit any­where what we have expe­ri­enced ear­lier [ Even the crazy Mohan dia­logues ]. A set of friends talk and through out the movie [ almost ! ] I never felt that they speak some writ­ten dia­logues. I heard once that Venkat prabhu asked the crew to chat casu­ally and cap­tured some of the wits came out of the con­ver­sa­tion. Also, the char­ac­ters get equal oppor­tu­ni­ties to enact their roles [ includ­ing the char­ac­ter Rock­ers team cap­tain John ].

Dia­logues are used with almost fresh­ness with­out look­ing for the gram­mar of cin­ema dia­logues.. [ Some­body hits the ball out­side the ground and Siva going out to get the ball says pOdaa poram­boku :) ]. I remem­ber my school friends used to utter the best avail­able tamil words, dam­ag­ing the entire fam­ily, if a catch or 4 is missed.

Edit­ing needs a spe­cial men­tion as the lengthy game cricket can’t be shown over by over in a movie. It would be dif­fer­ent for other games [ 10 round box­ing was inter­est­ingly edited in ‘Cin­derella man’, children’s cycle race in ‘Chil­dren of heaven’ — Adhaane.. endgadaa kana­menu nenachen :) ] but it’s really tough to edit a cricket match [ thought it’s 15 overs ] by show­ing the gist of the match. The credit goes to Lenin sir.

Yuvan Shankar raja has done a fab­u­lous job with his songs. My favourites are ” Un paar­vai mele pat­taal [ What a song , Vaali at his best as usual ] — Vijay Yesu­doss “, “Yaaro — SPB” and of course ‘Saroja.. saa­maan nikaalo’ [ beau­ti­ful dance num­ber.. A sim­ple catchy line used by a setji in Mud­hal­van ]. Pre­mji Amaren apart from his casual role, has taken care of the back­ground score. Equal to YSR, he has done a fan­tas­tic job — he is very bril­liant in choos­ing some old movie songs and music [ Pothi vacha mal­laigai mottu, Aboorva sao­god­harar­gall sad theme, sax theme for Arvind’s love, gui­tar for a break in friend­ship, yaaro theme for another love, cricket theme ]. All the music used in the back­ground eas­ily fits the visu­als, just like a glove.

Some­times, a clever crazy Mohan dia­logue or a catchy tim­ing of Prab­hudeva might be eas­ily missed in a movie. Sim­i­larly, when I watched it first time, I couldn’t fol­low much of ‘Badawa’ Gopi’s cricket com­men­tary. Sec­ond time, I was able to cap­ture them and listed here. The dia­logues are so natural.

என்ன‌டா இன்னைக்கி க்ரவுண்டே ஜிலோனு இருக்குது..

அந்த‌ர் ப‌ண்ணிட‌லாம்டா ம‌ச்சான்

” உத‌டு கிட்ட‌ வ‌ந்து டைம் என்னானு கேட்டா ம‌ச்சி.. ::: ஏய்.. வாட்ச் இன்னா வாய்ல‌யா வ‌ச்சிருந்த..”

“அறிவில்ல‌… :::: இதோ பின்னாடி தாண்டா இருக்கான் ”

த‌ம்பி.. டாஸ் ஜெயிச்சிட்டீங்க‌.. சொல்லுங்க‌.. ஃபீல்டிங்கா..ப‌வுலிங்கா..

Snip­pets from Badawa Gopi’s cricket commentary.

முல்லை பெரியாறை விட‌ பெரிய ஆறு.. [ Sixer :) ].

க‌ள‌த்திலே ப‌ள்ள‌மில்லை என்றாலும் ம‌ட்டையைத் த‌ட்டி த‌ட்டி..

கௌரி ஆன்ட்டி வீட்டு எண்ட்லிருந்து..திருப்ப‌தி ல‌ட்டு போல‌ ம‌ஞ்ச‌ளாக‌ ஒன்று வ‌ருகிற‌தே.. அதை தான் நீங‌க‌ள் அடிக்க‌ வேண்டும்

வெற்றிக் க‌னி ஜூஸ் வ‌டிவில் வ‌ருகிற‌து..

இடுப்பில் ட‌ய‌ர் வைத்திருக்கும்.. இஞ்சி இடுப்ப‌ழ‌க‌ன் ம‌ட்டை வீச‌ வ‌ருகிறார்..

ஐஸ்வ‌ர்யா ராய் நேரில் வ‌ந்து ந‌ம‌து சுமார் மூஞ்சி குமாரை எப்ப‌டி ஐ ல‌வ் யூ என்று சொல்ல‌ முடியாதோ.. அதே போல‌ 15 ஓவ‌ர்க‌ளில் 135 அடிப்ப‌து ந‌ட‌க்க‌ முடியாது.

Coin­ci­den­tally [ God promise-aanga ], I hap­pened to travel with Venkat Prabhu in the same Indian Air­lines flight from HYD to Chen­nai [ IC936 –6.30 AM]. He was accom­pa­nied by another guy [ Asst direc­tor ] nar­rat­ing a fight story between a police man and an army man [ VPrabhu paavamga.. 6.30AM flightla pasila kad­hai kettu vand­hiru­paar ]. I had approached him and told that I watched Chen­nai — 600028 for the third time and it was so refresh­ing. He accepted the appre­ci­a­tion very humbly and told that the movie GOA will be ready for Diwali release.

the best dia­logue is

லெக் சைட்ல‌ போட‌த‌டா.. ஆஃப் சைட்ல‌யே மைன்டைன் ப‌ண்ணு.. அடிக்க‌ரறாணுங்க‌ன்னு தெரியுதில்ல‌.. ம‌ச்சி .. 32 ர‌ன் தாண்டா அடிச்சிருக்கோம்.. பாத்துடா.. ப்ளீஸ்டா..

ஏ.. அவ‌ன் எப்ப‌டி போட்டாலும் அடிக்க‌றாண்டா !

:)
–Toto.

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