Typically 'Ko'llywood!

When people, who rejected Vaanam claiming it to be boring and uninteresting, praised Ko for being innovative and packed with interesting moments, I should have known what to expect from the movie. Well not that I do not know what the yuppie Tamil movie goers and the elitist class of Chennai wants in a Kollywood entertainer. My friend and I just took a chance, like many of the stupid and highly risky chances that we have taken before when it comes to Tamil movies.

Well, it was not difficult to predict what kind of a movie that is going to be played on the screen, after the few initial scenes. Silly, contrived and predictable, the movie claims itself to be a political thriller. The movie is an unpalatable concoction of politics, friendship and love. Take a thread of extremely silly Utopian dream with narrow and limited understanding about corruption. Weave the thread with a triangular love story, in which one woman even while she yawns does it with extreme poise and grace, and naturally ends up being the best available choice for the courageous hero. The other woman lacking feminine grace and docility expected out of Tamil women, naturally becomes the sidekick for the hero and the heroine and obviously dies a brutal death because she is not someone cut out for any man (specifically Tamil man with high moral values!) to fall in love with, leave alone the hero. Well, what ending can you expect for a woman of such low morals and unwomanly behaviour in Tamil cinema? Then intersperse it with a pack of highly melodious romantic songs here and there, including the one which the hero and heroine sing unashamedly on the night immediately after the brutal death of her unwomanly best friend, even before she is cremated. Then, pepper it with one or two homophobic dialogues with judicious mix of anti women and politically incorrect jokes such as the ones about commercial sex workers. There, you have a heady mix of an innovative family entertainer that the Tamil audience would just lap up.

The movie could not have done any more injustice to the character of Pia, who has donned the role of ungracious woman. The character of Karthika is cliché’d, confused and fails to impress. Then you have Ajmal and Jiva, with another uninteresting subplot of friends turning foes. Phew! If you have not walked out by then, you would probably want to kill yourself for making you go through such a torture on a Saturday evening.

And if people say that Ko is a box office hit, it would not be surprising. After all, aren’t we talking about the same audience which lapped up Vinnaithandi Varuvaya with such joy and energy!