Doctor is a film written and directed by Nelson Dilipkumar and jointly produced by Sivakarthikeyan Productions and KJR Studios. It has Sivakarthikeyan and Priyanka Arul Mohan in the lead roles, Vinay as the antagonist, while Arun Alexander, Archana, Deepa, Redin Kingsley, Yogi Babu and others play crucial supporting roles.
Sivakarthikeyan plays the role of Varun, a doctor who is engaged to Padmini (Priyanka Arul Mohan). The engagement breaks off due to certain reasons, while Padmini's niece Chinnu gets kidnapped on the same day. How Varun manages to rescue her forms the rest of the plot.
Doctor starts off on a middling note, which is partially due to the way Sivakarthikeyan's character has been written. It's very different from the man we've seen all these years and once you get accustomed to the change, the film is a dynamite. The film leaves you wondering if someone like Sivakarthikeyan ever smiled in the runtime.
He rarely emotes which adds on to the humour factor, and he's perfectly complemented by Redin Kingsley. Inarguably, each of Redin's lines make you roll on the floor laughing. In a way, Nelson has carved his own space in Tamil cinema with his brand of Black comedy.
The way he's written the sequences featuring Yogi Babu and Redin Kingsley again deserves a lot of praise. The first 30 minutes of the film had a lot of cinematic liberties taken was a minor concern initially.
It is often said that laughter is the best medicine. It's practicality is a question but it does seem to be the antidote for all the writing flaws the film has. The humour factor makes you forgive everything and enjoy the entire duration. One particular writing decision that works is not having any social message for the audience. The film sets off to entertain and it does that alone.
The film gets the casting part right with each one holding their fort well. From Yogi Babu to Deepa to Archana to Redin, they all give memorable performances, and their characters will stay in our minds for a long long time.
As far as the technical side is concerned, the CGI and visual effects in the climax could have been better in an otherwise visually mature film. The cinematography by Vijay Kartik Kannan is solid. The film has very few dialogues and it's Anirudh's music that carries the story forward. There's a stunt sequence in the metro and his score for that scene is a sample for his work in this film.
Overall, Nelson sticks to his strengths and delivers a laughter riot. It's often said that a weakness is a weakness only when it can be attacked. Here the humour provides the shield for all the weaknesses the film has. Nelson and SK succeed in delivering an engaging and entertaining film, and the former has also etched a space for himself, making him a director to look out for in the future.