Star Cast: Vijay, Rashmika Mandanna, R. Sarathkumar, Prakash Raj, Shaam, Srikanth, Yogi Babu, Jayasudha
Director: Vamshi Paidipally
What’s Good: Vijay being Vijay!
What’s Bad: If you remove Vijay from Varisu, you’ll be left with nothing but an over-the-top family drama stuck in the 90s
Loo Break: Whenever there comes a scene without Vijay
Watch or Not?: Only if you’re a Vijay fan, that too, whenever it releases digitally
Available On: Theatrical Release
Runtime: 167 Minutes
User Rating:
Rajendran (R. Sarathkumar) is a billionaire dad to 3 sons Jai (Srikanth) Ajay (Shaam) & Vijay (Vijay) and if you’ve seen 90s family dramas, you already know the youngest son is the ‘khota sikka’ who brings together the rest of the toxic family. Similarly, Vijay rejects his father’s luxurious empire but, after 7 years is called back by his mother to attend a family function.
There he gets to know about how crumbled his family has been without him, and he decides to stay back helping his father to win back his lost sons. Oh, also, cross-checking another cliched family drama trope is the father has to have some life-threatening disease. How else do you think everyone else will realize what family is? Only after the one who started it dies trying to make you realise the same. It’s all about bringing every family member together and staying happily ever after (without papa!).
Varisu Movie Review: Script Analysis
Letting the story stand tall on the heroic presence of Vijay, script-writers somehow tend to forget to make things intriguing & take shortcuts like relying solely on the lead actor charming his way in. After a point of time, even Salman Khan failed to achieve the same in Bollywood and it seems Vijay has taken the same route. Vamshi Paidipally, Hari, Ashishor Solomon’s story is a poorly rehashed and mashed-up version of every 90s family drama ever.
To enrapture the viewers with this castle of a house, Karthik Palani’s camerawork overcompensates at places with too many angles jerking the scenes. The cinematography is decent otherwise, especially capturing the hand combat sequences’ brilliant action choreography by Dhilip Subbarayan. Praveen K. L’s editing does no help in keeping the pace at a desired speed for such a dragging & predictable story.
Varisu Movie Review: Star Performance
Vijay does what he does best but yet again in a film whose story isn’t qualified enough to handle his ‘mass’. The problem isn’t him being the best thing about the film, but the actual problem is he’s the only good thing about the film. His dance, his actions, and his antiques are all perfectly fine but they don’t find the right ‘home’ in this family drama.
Rashmika Mandanna continues to sign the flower pot actress roles & this ain’t much different. Staying in the story without creating any impact on it apart from looking good and dancing well, is something actresses should really refrain from doing. It’s 2023! To be fair to all, every other actor in the cast apart from Vijay is a flower pot actor in this film.
R. Sarathkumar as Vijay’s father doesn’t get much to do to build the emotions in the father-son bond, and the same goes for Jayasudha playing his mother. Vijay, in a scene, mimics Shah Rukh Khan’s iconic index finger waving pose from K3G but that worked purely because of Karan Johar’s rightly dramatic direction.
Prakash Raj as a villain is of no use, not a single scene of him will make you feel terrified for Vijay. Shaam & Srikanth as Vijay’s brothers are just to form a toxic family, both don’t really invoke any ‘bhaichara’ emotions to intrigue the viewers. Yogi Babu continues to be the routine cliched comic relief he has been in such Tamil films.
Varisu Movie Review: Direction, Music
Vamshi Paidipally had everything at his disposal, a bankable star, a decent cast, money-making genre but the only thing he missed churning out was a justifiable story. I had a similar issue with Salman Khan’s Prem Ratan Dhan Payo as well but that one still had a good music album.
Thaman S has composed the album for this one with only Jimikki Ponnu being the bearable track because of Vijay’s performance & the music. Even the songs get monotonous coming across like they were the only options to the makers for keeping the viewers somewhat interested in the film.
Varisu Movie Review: The Last Word
All said and done, the major issue about Vijay’s family drama is it misses two important things: interesting family and impactful drama. Beast, despite all its flaws, was a superior project to this one.
Two stars!
Varisu Trailer
Varisu releases on 11 January, 2023.
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Not into family-dramas, check out our Malikappuram Movie Review for something different!
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