Spoilers ahead.
Highlights
- Arvind Swami and Karthi, two fabulous actors by themselves, bond seamlessly and take us on a pleasant unexpected journey. While Arvind Swami uses his eyes to effectively convey his emotions, it is Karthi with his body language and quirky come-backs that steals the show.
- Devadharshini, very much under-rated, but an amazing actor, has portrayed the character of a nuanced, balanced spouse of Arvind Swami with quite a grace and hope she gets her due. All other supporting actors including RajKiran have performed their roles well.
- The realistic locations along with the charm of Thanjavur and Needamangalam (some of my actual childhood spent there) were portrayed beautifully through the lens of cinematographer, Mahendiran Jayaraju.
- Last but not least, full credit to the director C.Prem Kumar to come up with a simple yet effective story of family and relationships with a slow, yet effective screenplay. Credit to 2D productions (Suriya and Jyothika) for boot-strapping this beautiful narrative with many more stories waiting to be unearthed.
Alternate Ending
As much as I loved the climax, it perhaps fell a little short of the high note that I had expected. A alternative ending could have been Karthi’s character coming over suddenly to Arvind Swami’s house (by getting his address through his means) and them having the emotional climax scene in person and as Arvind Swami’s playfully shares that he knows his dear potato’sactual name, the scene could have cut to Karthi handing over his new born child to Arvind Swami and Arvind Swami whispering the kid’s father’s name as Meiyazhagan (the movie’s title) to the new born child.
Nevertheless, the movie explores themes of nostalgia, self-discovery and takes us down to our memory-lanes of our beautiful childhood and amazing memories with all our cousins and extended families. Hoping to see many more decent, family based movies in times to come.