Mr. Chandramouli Review: A Mindless Casual Underwhelming Entertainer

Mr. Chandramouli – the movie has a lot of positive things for the hype to build up.

For one, the title! The movie is named after the classic phrase mouthed by actor Karthik in the classic flick “Mouna Raagam”. The wittiness and youthful scene in that movie was great.

And the movie was a milestone for Karthik. Having used that phrase (remember the slang and intonation) as the movie title, with Karthik in one of the lead roles is definitely a plus.

But unfortunately, the popular phrase to a name of the character is where this stops with Mr. Chandramouli. We are not able to relate to that Karthik most of the times!

Then we have Regina and Gautham with a comfortable chemistry on screen. There is a beach song which turned out to do the marketing for the movie.

The casting is a plus too – The father-son duo happened to play the father-son on screen too. Their characterizations and their bond could have been given even more depth. That’s a miss.

We have Sathish, Nandu Jagan for the comic part that works in a few places.

We have Mahendran and Santhosh Prathap playing rivals as call taxi firm owners. Varalaxmi Sarathkumar plays a pivotal role.

Despite all these pluses, the movie is definitely underwhelming. We have a feeling that all these pluses could have easily made into a winning formula.

Sadly, Thiru has not made the most out of what he got. Nevertheless, the movie is not a total disappointment either.

It works in parts, here and there and will definitely entertain you (again in parts).

One of the major setbacks for the movie is that the director himself seemed to be a lot confused about how to take the movie along.

The genre as such isn’t well defined. Is it a romantic comedy, or a thriller (with a cat and mouse chase), or a who-dun-it crime flick, or a family sentimental drama? Or is it a musical story?

Nope, we don’t get to clearly see that.

The movie also resembles Nan Sigappu Manithan a lot – but that’s probably due to the directorial touch of Thiru.

The first half of the movie just passes on without an impact. You have a few entertaining moments – but mostly it is easy going.

The first half just shows you how happy the hero Raghav (Gautham Karthik) is. He is a boxer.

He has a dad who is easy going but has his sentiments too. Raghav has a friend Padmini (Sathish) and his dad has a car Padmini.

Oh and Raghav has a girlfriend (Regina). We have way too many songs that breaks the flow of screenplay that’s already a lot underwhelming.

On the parallel universe we have two call taxi firm owners, one who has just started (Vinayak Kanagasabai played by Santhosh Prathap) and one who is already popular (Azhagar, played by Mahendran).

Vinayak wants to become like Azhagar. And there happens a few crimes in the call taxies. The clash between these two owners become ugly and somehow the happy-go hero and his loved ones get pulled into the clash.

The second half does get somewhat clever and the movie picks up pace and that’s when it gets slightly engaging. But then too, the screenplay seems outdated and old school.

Just like as in Nan Sigappu Manithan, the hero has a disability and it is challenging for him to defeat the villain. How he succeeds in this challenge is delivered to us in an underwhelming screenplay.

The movie does try to bring out a few new things and it succeeds in parts.

Only if the director had made the most out of the cast and screenplay, Mr. Chandramouli would have been a gripping entertainer like its name.