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Aandavan
(Dubbed Film)
We have seen this done before by those who are out to make
a quick buck - dig up old movies starring a newly popular
star and dub them, with the star(who in all probability
had a borderline role in the movie) now the center of
attraction. Several of Kushboo's movies from other
languages were dubbed in this way once she became a big
star. Now its Rajnikanth's turn as one of his older and
worse, eminently forgettable Hindi flicks makes its way to
screens as Aandavan.
With the only target audience being the
fans of the star, overall quality of the end product is
not high on the list of the people behind these movies. So
the movies generally tend to be disappointing for all but
the most hardcore fans of the star. But inspite of the
less-than-stellar company, Aandavan is a disaster. A
remake of Aatank Hi Aatank, which focussed on Aamir Khan's
growth into a reluctant don, the movie becomes a vehicle
for Rajnikanth, who plays Aamir's elder brother. But it is
doubtful if even Rajni fans, who haven't seen their hero
for over a year since
Padaiyappa, will sit
through this mess.
The movie begins along the lines of
Naayagan with the hero, a
young boy who sees his parents being killed, murders the
killer and runs off to Bombay(the scenes upto here have
been reshot in tamil). There he is taken in by
Sivasubramani, a man who has recently moved to Bombay from
Madras. Sivasubramani grows to be a big don and the boy
Mustafa(Rajnikanth) is his right hand man. There are
several other dons in Bombay and their only agenda is to
kill Sivasubramani. They manage to shoot Sivasubramani in
broad daylight and this pushes his son Rakesh(Aamir Khan)
into the same violent life led by his father and brother.
The movie is nothing more than a
collection of clips that Rajnikanth makes an appearance
in, from the Hindi original. So we are completely lost as
far as the other characters are concerned. Most of them
come and go and we have no idea who they are since scenes
which probably explained their background have been
snipped away. Aamir Khan is reduced to a bystander for
most of the movie and appears only for a duet with Juhi
Chawla in the first half(his name appears after
Vadivukkarasi's name in the credits, which should give you
an idea of his importance in the scheme of things!). It is
only after he becomes the focus of the movie that the
moviemakers have reluctantly included scenes with him.
With this state of things, it makes no
sense analysing the story or loopholes in the movie. And
from the collection of clippings, it can be gathered that
the original hindi version was no classic! Direction is
ham-handed and the actors appear wooden. Dialogs are
stilted and artificial and sequences are boring when they
are not laughable. To compound our misery, the tamil
version ends abruptly in the middle of a fight sequence
with a proclamation that "Aandavan's reign will continue!"
Ofcourse I was glad that the ordeal had ended but some
kind of closure would have been nice!
If I didn't know the origins of this
movie, I would have thought that I was seeing Rajnikanth
parody his own image and style in tamil movies. His styles
and actions seem exaggerated(the scene where he smashes
the camera of a photographer at his sister's wedding
seemed almost comical) and his discomfort with emotional
scenes is evident in the scene where he cries to his
father. Aamir Khan tries gamely to carry off the gangster
role but looks extremely funny with the moustache and
gelled hair. Deva has tuned some new songs and the lyrics
are pepperred with enough personal references to Rajni to
get his fans cheering.
This has been a particularly bad period
as far as the quality of tamil movies goes. The last 10
movies in my 'Small Screen' section include only one
2-star movie and even that is a dubbed flick. Aandavan is
easily the worst of the lot.But the silver lining is that
after this, things can only get better.
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