Maaman is a Tamil Indian action drama filmography which was written and directed by Prasanth Pandiyaraj. It is an Indian film starring Soori and Aishwarya Lekshmi in the lead roles and directed by K. Kumar under Lark Studios and Larcen Distribution. Dinesh Purushothaman did the cinematography in the film, Hesham Abdul Wahab did the music, and the editing was done by Ganesh Siva.
The movie has the official run time of 2 hours and 31 minutes, averagely normal length of a Tamil movie. It is yet to be reported by established news sources, the budget of this new film, and the same true with its box office collection should it be available, then I will update this here. The fundamentals are cleared off, and now it is time to go into the details of the movie.
Contents
Review
The Maaman portrays how an uncle and nephew paid attention to each other emotionally. The film begins as a friendly and relaxed adventure, but later swings and sways down into fluid family relationships involving just as much love, devotion, and self-sacrifice as it is doing anything and everything the wrong way.
It is the tale of a kind of one uncle, Inba (Soori), who shows abnormal love to his sister, Nilan aka Laddu, son. It is inba who is more active in the boy raising than even the genuine father. This is a beautiful family set up at face value. That is however changed when Inba marries Dr. Rekha (Aishwarya Lekshmi). Her insistence of space and focus by her husband kicks out as one of the significant problems in the film when Laddu does not want to share his uncle with anyone.
Maaman is not on the conflict within the family but the manner in which the movie handles that. The love of Laddu expressed by Inba is excessive, and his predilection to treat Rekha in this way is not just. Instead of emotional maturity required in a marriage, the story judges Rekha unjustly who has to bend down without taking her complaints into consideration, although she has got complaints. This manner of seeing kills much of the heart in it.
It is good Aishwarya Lekshmi is playing as Rekha, the only one with a sense and dignity. Her acting is sincere and powerful and it exhibits patience however it shows agony as well. In a heartfelt performance, Soori plays Inba with heart, but there is no drive or development in the character. His personality is simply in a never-ending cycle of the same emotional lines and it might cause viewers feel estranged by the second part.
Prageeth Sivan became good as Laddu, a good character planned, but to his misfortune, his character is developed to become a touch too pushy and sometimes rather annoying to the audience instead of being cute. Girija (Swasika) is the emotional sister, even at that time, there are situations her depiction was rather on the extreme, given that she is a school teacher.
The old couple, to which the aged couple are played by Rajkiran and Viji Chandrasekhar is not greatly connected to the main plot yet has its own emotional moments. Instead of giving the movie depth, this ensures that it is stretchy, prolonged, and unnecessary.
The film is aesthetically smooth and the film music is pleasant but excessively melodramatic. The screenplay starts off very well, and then soon concentrates in overboard digressions and wasted opportunities. Flashes here and there, as Rekha makes herself felt in one instance, are smothered in too many melodramatic touches.
Maaman claims to be a love story about the family, nevertheless we see that it does not respect emotional boundaries, or modern morals of relationships in the process. It can be relevant to the audience who simply adores traditional ways of saying things, and it can be outdated to the viewers who finds contemporary ways of telling stories.
Overall, there is a relatable setup and relatively decent performances by Maaman. But it loses the chance of plumbing its powerful themes at equal measure. The film aims to caution us that family matters, and it fails to deliver a response, or a reminder, to subject us that healthy relationships are of importance, too.
Cast
At Maaman, the emotions are unbridled and thus ensemble is the strength of the film and Soori plays a full-fledged emotional character. A comedy specialist, Soori as Inba, a friendly uncle to have a popular nephew named Laddu, proves the point of conflict in the middle of the movie. Soori gives a sincere representation of a father with affection and goes as far as playing some serious roles beyond comedy. His depiction of devotion by Inba is believable when we enter the book and he shows it, but with no progression of the feeling behind his character, it soon ends up appearing as a 1-dimensional portrayal of his later actions. As the co-aspiring writer and the actor, Soori could have provided the other face to his character.
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One of the brightest in the movie is Aishwarya Lekshmi in the part of Rekha, a man stirred in the modern educated world, who has a void in her marriage. She evolves in to Rekha whose release is silent pain, exasperation, and finally, dignity. Like the most rational in a home now gone mad among the several, Aishwarya comes with it under soft lookings and with so much screen space. She could have been allowed considerably more time on screen in order to bring her depth of character.
Swasika enacts the jealous sister to the character of Girija and the mother who loves him dearly. Her actions alternated between the doe-like and macho, power. Her personality exemplifies the ideal of traditional maternal values, but how she is unwilling to deal with the behavioural problems of her son appears disproportional.
Rajkiran and Viji Chandrisekhar as Singarayar and Pavunu as the old man and woman respectively in the secondary plot which retraces the central plot. The actions in the scenes are credible, but the emotional line seems to be forced and clichéd. But its latter part is now impregnated by these two.
Bala Saravanan plays a relatively minor comic character, Selvam and there he gives the funniest scenes of the movie. His comic sense of timing bursts in, to relieve a bit of emotional doldrums and is pointed out by some as viewing highlight.
Bobby Simha enters in a small role, Kumaravel though it is an underwritten character. Baba Bhaskar (in the sense of Ravi being the husband of Girija (Pragathi), the pauper): Lone Ranger in his household. His personality has only been peeped at, but it is full of nuances since he is a father seeking to be relevant in his own family.
Being the mother of Inba and Girija, Geetha Kailasam, has a scene that was very strong in an emotional conflict, so it turned out that she is quite a versatile actor. Powerstar Srinivasan and VTV Ganesh take the role of comedy and seem to be treated as some of the narrative features that are alien to the main plot. There is a cameo appearance by Unni Mukundan which however has least effect to the story.
Generally, Maaman is a challenging drama with few commendable acting by Soori and Aishwarya Lekshmi. Most of the cast, however, is failed in favour of the dated family tropes of the movie.
Critical Reception
Abhinav Subramanian of The Times of India gave the rating of two and a half stars out of five because of the concept of the movie and the emotion behind it, but believed that Maaman exaggerated the concept of the child named Laddu until he was a boss spoilt and not an adorable brat. According to them, Soori is performing the role of the uncle too well and forgetting his wife, Rekha, along the way. Because of the restrained manner of her acting, Aishwarya Lekshmi does an adequate job, and the film is too thick and thin to confront serious family matters.
Cinema Express critic Avinash Ramachandran gave the film two and a half out of five stars and liked the emotional start of the film and fully developed characters with Rekha played by Aishwarya Lekshmi being the most notable character. They believed that Maaman would be too predictable and too dependent on family drama tropes, though. Soori makes justice to his position, the women have less to do so. The film is, however, interesting in some decent concepts, yet at the same time it reiterates many of the cliches, lacking depth or clear point of view into the matter.
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Janani K of India Today wrote two stars of five and has praised the acting of Soori, Aishwarya Lekshmi and other cast and said, “Maaman starts off quite well, about the love family shares. However, in their opinion, the film slowly passes into the realm of stereotypes of the past, marginalizing women. The supposedly love-filled, care tormented story glorifies unhealthy behaviour. The message may draw an outdated and one-sided feel to the contemporary spectators.
Kirubhakar Purushothaman of News18 gave the film two and half out of five stars and praised its emotional tone and acting and especially the acting of the old couple who portrayed the movie but said that Maaman glorifies unhealthy family ties. The aborted wife is, after all, sidelined in the film in an attempt to depict a strong relation between the uncle and nephew, which merits the scheming of Inba. Finally, instead of problem solving, it gives preference to tradition than logic and the woman is silent, she only adapts to the problem but does not solve it.
Audience Reactions
The audience liked the movie, Maaman because of its positive reviews, with only 1k people at the IMDb rating the movie 6 stars, which may not effectively portray the general purpose of the wider scope, but on Google, almost 150 people rated the movie 4.4 out of 5 stars. On checking the user reviews, I discovered that Maaman is a polarizing Tamil family paper which has optionally impacted many viewers, but made the rest irritated by its excessive nature and shammy and stilted emotional drama. The film has been largely appreciated about its sentiments, emotional family feeling and cultural values particularly the affection between uncle Inba (Soori) and nephew Nilan (Laddu).
According to some commentators, the film was a family viewing movie, a must-watch, with a solid representation of the brother & sister relationships, it reflected the elderly couple chemistry, and marriage and extended family relationships. It was the film that touched dozens of people and took hundreds of others to re-examine their relationships and identify with the concepts of empathy and unconditional love. The emotional story-telling caught up with them and some even went as far as stating that the movie was the very best in years.
The genuine feeling of the empathetic uncle that Soori displayed was passed as the viewer dubbed him as real and emotionally strong. Many would also appreciate the way Aishwarya Lekshmi played a wife, Rekha, who seeks space and emotional closeness in the marriage relationship. The small boy, Laddu, was also appealing and amusingly clumsily noisy with others, though not one did not find him to be somewhat excessive at one time or another.
There was great disappointment by some viewers. They sneered at the slow pace of the film, and the melodrama and artificial conflict. Such users indicated that such persistent overweight obsession with the child by the uncle remains unhealthy in his marriage and to his daughter, and some were appalled when the protagonist reached a stage where he strikes his pregnant wife, which turned out to be highly objectionable to the user community. It has also been stated by the users that the film tried to whitewash traditionalism to the extent that it accepted toxicity, and it was the expression of family values. Others identified the acting of Soori as tented and screenplay, especially on the second part of the movie, scrappy and off-patient.
Finally, Maaman is also a moving film that wins the heart with its sentimentality about bondage and family, but also falls into criticism due to being over-dramatised and confronting gender politics. The film contains deep participation of the users, which refers to the experienced good and bad parts of all users concerned and that is what makes it culturally rational but separated viewing experience.
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Soundtrack Review
Maaman movie songs are composed of a blend of emotion, songs including melodies and lyrics that are only appropriate in a movie with a topic about family as what the song is talking about. The album, which is composed by Hesham Abdul Wahab, Ravi G, Sean Roldan and others, reveals different emotional tones of the film: love, longing, inner struggle, and resolution. Since most of the songs have been penned by Vivek, there is a lot of warmth and rudimentary poetic touch to the songs, which sit pretty well with the average listener.
The brilliant Kallaliye Kallaliye, delivered in an impressive manner by Hesham Abdul Wahab and Sharanya Srinivas is a lot of soft romantic song expressing first steps and soft steps of love between Inba (Soori) and Rekha (Aishwarya Lekshmi). The closeness of the instrumentalization and the innocence of the lyrics of the song resembles the silent way in which love begins growing in the middle of relatives conflicts. The song is misery filled and has a lot of emotional weight.
Ravi G has written a wonderful which is translated perfectly well under the title Azhage Agarame and it brings the romantic touch to the story. The film is interwoven such that the song simply fits in and explains how little personal space to each other the main characters have since they barely have time together, as they are too busy with family contributions. It is made up of the words of unspoken desire, suppressed feelings.
Dheivamagane Dheivamagane by K.S. Harisankar belongs to the genre of so-called devotional, which raises the theme of respect to family and sacrifice to the culmination. It is very emotional, sentimental, thematically echoing the passionate nature of Inba on his inability to make his nephew Nilan (Laddu) feel things his way, whose feeling of superiority spreads havoc on the film.
The songs by Shweta Mohan like “Kannale Pesuma” is another love ballad that has been known to bring out in the inner voice of the protagonist Rekha, her desires, hopes, and frustrations in pursuit of love. It is a very important detail of perception of the emotional journey of the female protagonist.
The energetic tune Vishtule Thalavizhuthe adds a wonderful lash of colour to the party and is used to compliment some of the dramatic scenes, but Vaanam Kizhiyuthu performed by Job Kurian gives the impression of an old cheesy rustic touch and a closure.
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The narrative is built at a stratified level by Maaman in its songs. Negative responses to the mixed reception of the story depicted in the movie were compensated by the soundtrack that made people emotionally engaged. It is one album to listen to during the family time, touching the soul Tamil tracks.
How to Watch
The movie, Maaman is running in the box office or theatres and the only option to watch it is by going to the theatre and post theatrical release rights means that the OTT release rights have been sold to Zee5, so it will be released after the theatrical run is over, and in case you are unable to go to theatre to watch the movie, just wait few months and watch it at the comfort of your own home.
The movie also sold the satellite release rights to Zee Tamil, meaning that the movie will also air on Zee channels, yet the only better way to watch it is in the theatres or the OTT.
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