En Mana Vaanil

Sify.Com: After the stupendous success of Kasi, Malayalam director Vinayan is once again back with his new film En Mana Vaanil, which is a remake of his own hit film. The director is always in the news for making low budget hit films with new faces. The original in Malayalam Ooma Penninu Uriyada Payans lead cast Jayasurya and Kavya Madhavan are cast in the Tamil version too. The film is produced by Oscar Ravichandran.

The hero (Jayasurya), who is a good artist, is born dumb. He works for an advertising agency. Vadivelu and Manivannan are his close friends. One day while he is painting a hoarding on a roadside, he chances to see a girl (Kavya Madhavan) watching him from a Mercedes car. She is the daughter of an affluent member of a royal family. She is also deaf and dumb. Soon they both fall in love and elope to Ooty. Her marriage is fixed with another guy and he follows them to Ooty. Will the lovers unite in the end? Well, the climax has truly the Vinayan touch.

On the whole the film is a good entertainer with some hilarious comedy in the first half, which later peters out to be a steamy tearjerker. Illayaraja is the music director and Pazhani Bharathi writes the lyrics. Utpal.V.Nayanar is the cinematographer and the screenplay is by Gopikrishna. The cast also has Vayyapuri, Akash, Beena, and Kovai Sarala.

Chennaionline.Com: The director seems to have a penchant for stories centered round handicapped people. Its not only his lead players, but also some of the supporting cast, who are either mentally or physically challenged. If Kasi had a blind street singer and a limping crony, En Mana Vaanile has a lead pair who are mutes, and a hunch-backed sidekick.

A wealthy heiress falls in love with a youth who paints hoardings for a living. Enter the villain of the piece, the girls Mumbai cousin, with an eye on her wealth. He could marry the girl and get his family out of near bankruptcy. The eloping of the lovers, the chases, the exposing of the villains motive, and the re-union of the lovers forms the rest of the story. So whats new one might ask?

Just that the director has made his protagonists mutes, the girl being additionally deaf. So while one commends the director for his daring in making his lead players not utter a single word in the film, one cannot but notice that the rest is routine stuff. Further, if you are misled into thinking that the duo being mutes, itll be silence most of the time the duo are in the frame, you are soon put right. For the noise and the racket the duo create, more than makes up for the absence of any dialogue for them. And with the heros cronies being Vyapuri, Vadivelu and Manivannan, isnt it unfair to expect a less noisy ambience? Vadivelu plays a hunchback with quite a flexible hump on his back!