Amazon’s  Raame Aandalum Raavane Aandalum Is Well Meaning But Trite

Raame Aandalum Raavane Aandalum(Amazon Prime video)

Rating: **

Raame Aandalum Raavane Aandalum: It breaks  one’s heart to  not like this earnest-to-god  film. It’s like your little niece spending  the whole day  cooking for you , then spreading out the  meal  on the table and waiting eagerly for you to eat  and  appreciate the meal.

How  can  you tell the  truth about an effort so  sincere ? Raame Aandalum Raavane Aandalum(RARA) is a well-meaning  film. But it is  not an  entertaining or engaging   film. Not by any stretch  of the imagination. The script is stiff trite  and selfconsciously conscientious. Its heard bleeds for the neglect of  rural  India.

By  simply  venting one’s grief and  concern, no matter how  genuine and well-earned, a  film cannot earn  brownie  points.  Raame Aandalum Raavane Aandalum suffers from a serious  scarcity of skilled  storytelling. The  plot is a simple fable  about a economically  deprived  village  in Tamil Nadu called Poocheri where a  simple uneducated couple    Kunni(Mithun Manickam) and  Veerayi(Ramya Pandian) mourn for their  missing “kids”.

 The “kids” turn out to be two bulls Kurrupa and  Villaiya whom the couple  treat like their own  biological children. These are  bulls you never  find rampaging in  a China shop.From this one-note  jokey  point,  the plot heaves  and lurches  into a series of clumsily designed  episodes, each  more awkward  than  the  other. Finally we are  left looking at  nothing more than  a very poor  echo  of  Anusha Rizvi’s  Peepli Live which  was no great shakes in the  first place.

From  the  performances to the dialogues, everything in  Raame Aandalum Raavane Aandalum appears  to be  undercooked and  jejune. The  jokes about  a Granny plastering her  face with powder  to be  photographed   or a wretched  politician being asked  by the spunky  Veerayi, “Suppose two of  your kids are lost how would you feel  if two other kids are given to you in their place?”   seem  to patronize  rural India , thereby  defeating the  film’s very purpose  of existence.

 By the time  a stereotypical  news journalist Narmada(Vani Bhojan) shows up in Poocheri, we know that the script is  rapidly running out of tricks to keep the actors invested. Both  the  lead actor look distinctly ill-at-ease shedding  tears for  their “kids”.They are  new. But they are not convinced  about what  they are  doing.

More conviction in the implausible  plot could have been generated  from a  more authentic bedrock  of emotions. Everyone here seems to be echoing a cover version of rural poverty rather than feeling any original emotions.