''We don't want Theri and Vedalam all the time''

Like many people, my go-to plan for a perfect weekend is to watch a nice Tamil movie on a Saturday afternoon at the theatres. With not a lot of Tamil movies releasing this weekend, I decided to watch Dear Zindagi and why not, with King Khan, the super talented young Alia Bhattt, and Gauri Shinde (who’s English Vinglish I loved) I had more than enough reasons to go watch it. My weekend was made, but I had only one thing running in my mind walking out of the theatre after a pleasant experience for two and a half hours. Would any of our Kollywood’s big stars (Vijay and Ajith in particular) dare play the role of Dr. Jehangir Khan (Sharukh Khan’s character)?

Shahrukh plays the role of Alia’s brain doctor in the movie. He has no female opposite to romance, no songs where he can show his moves, no mass punch dialogues, no flashbacks from the past, not even preachy dialogues on how the perfect man or woman should be. He enters the screen 20 minutes prior to the interval and plays a very subtle character till the very end. Almost 80% of his scenes are within the same four walls where he shares short stories with Alia and listens to her. In spite of all this the King Khan steals the show with his mere presence and carries the movie on his shoulders.

Coming back to my thoughts walking out of the theatre, I was imagining how a remake of this movie would fare in Tamil. I couldn’t imagine anybody other than a Prakash Raj or a Nassar being cast in it if a remake was made. Not that they are any lesser actors, but imagine the reach of the movie if a Vijay or an Ajith would be ready to play the role.

Both Ajith and Vijay are proven actors and have played a lot of subtle and interesting characters in their earlier movies like Mugavari, Vaali, Sachien, and Kushi all of which were huge hits. I don’t understand the reason why they have confined themselves to the mass commercial formula movies.

I know a lot of people would argue saying that is what their fans expect and I completely disagree with that. Sharukh Khan and Salman Khan have broken their stereotypes and made movies like Fan and Bajrangi Bhaijaan both of which were well received by their fans and were huge hits. I believe we Kollywood fans are no lesser sensible and I don’t see a reason why we fans would say no when offered a wider genre of better entertainment.

Nobody knows and appreciates the talent and potential of Ajith and Vijay better than we Kollywood fans and we believe they can take Tamil cinema to greater heights by doing different kinds of movies. Yes, we do want the magnum mass entertainers like Theri and Vedhalam but not all the time.