Om Shanthi Om Movie Review
Written & Direction : Surya Prabaakar
Production : P. Arumai Chandran
Cast : Srikanth | Neelam Upadhyaya | Baiju
Music : Vijay Ebenezer
Cinematography : Bhaskaran K.M
Editing : Vivek Harshan
Production Company : 8 Point Entertainment
Running Time : 142 mins
Horror and its classified sub genres in blend with humour and romance has been turning to be an intriguing part of Tamil cinema. Just not more than a year, we find more than 30 Nos of horror flicks. Apparently, Om Shanthi Om that has been remaining inside cans for a very long time comes to the light through tunnel today. The film is directed by Surya Prabhakar with Srikanth and Neelam Upadhyaya playing the lead roles where Aadukalam Narain and Naan Kadavul Rajendran appear in important characters.
It’s a wafer thin storyline, where we find Srikanth as ordinary youngster across the nearby locations of Southern Tamil Nadu city. He has everything in life including a good job, decent lifestyle and indeed manages to win the heart of a beautiful girl (Neelam). To a surprising twist, his life goes through a perplexing phase, when he starts seeing some paranormal activities and phenomenal people around him.
Glimpsing on this synopsis, you could easily relate it with some of the famous films like Suriya-Nayantara starrer ‘Massu Engira Maasilamani’ and famous American TV Series Ghost Whisperers, which later reminiscently appeared as the major theme in Sun TV ‘Bhairavi’. Well, this should have clearly given a blatant call of what this film is all about. But somewhere , we can appreciate the director for making a feel-good theme based on this supernatural comedy. It’s not something that you’re going to be scared about, but the film is engrossing in parts. There is a sort of emotional turbulence as the protagonist comes across various people and accomplish their dreams. But at the same time, running length becomes a problem and few songs really hamper the momentum of screenplay, particularly in the second half.
The scene where Srikanth manages to get a girl married as her grandfather dreamt, the little boy who tries to communicate with his parents at ice cream parlour are well shot. Apparently, the humour quotients that come through Naan Kadavul Rajendran are laughter riot. But the chemistry between Srikanth and Neelam is missing in parts and director could have emphasized on this.
Srikanth manages to deliver what the character actually demands. Neelam is fine with her performance, but she looks exotically beautiful in couple of songs. The first half proceeds in a right momentum, but again as mentioned above, the second half turns out to be too lengthy.
Vijay Ebenezer gives some best efforts and it is visible with the songs, although they aren’t properly set appropriate with the screenplay.
On the whole, Om Shanthi Om might hold a good concept, but it comes to keeping the audiences engrossed for 140 minutes, it actually gets loose of some situations. By keeping the duration crisp and short, it could have made lots of attraction. Moreover , director and his team of writers have slightly failed to maintain the logic and continuity in many places.
