7-am Arivu: Bullet Point Report

• 7-am Arivu is Surya’s “Dasavatharam”, and I certainly do not mean that as a compliment. The first 20 minutes is paisa-vasool; but the next 2 hours provide several cringe-worthy moments that almost make you forget the first half.



• The Chinese song sounds so much like “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star...” . Did Bodhidharman introduce this song to the world too? Just asking ;).



• The whole circus background was so unnecessary. I initially thought Murugadoss was trying for some parallel to “Apoorva Sahodarargal” , but alas – or perhaps thankfully – not.



• After the movie I thought this was the 3rd superhero movie during Diwali – for Shruti Hassan could do genetic engineering, history research, ride an elephant, take up cudgels on behalf of Thamizh culture, distract museum guards, pontificate about cancer…wow!



• Except for the Bodhidharman portions, this was a disappointing performance by Surya – especially considering that he generally manages to impress even in a masala flick like “Singham”.



• It’s final. Shruti is not – NOT – a chip off the old block. She deserves full marks for trying though – very earnest:).



• Murugadoss finds a kick-ass villain, and still botches it up big time. First he overdoes the hypnotism bit until the audience groans at the umpteenth hypnotism sequence. Then he does it all over again with the zombie portions. I am sure both ideas sounded great one paper (and they do work well for while), but end up being poorly executed.



• Music sucks, especially the BGM.



• At the end of the movie, I fantasized about substituting Surya and Shruti with Vijaykanth and Namitha; the quality of the climax was firmly in “Dharmapuri” area by then. The scene where Shruti berates the scientists for not talking in Tamil was a major contributing factor in this assessment as well.



• If Aamir Khan remakes this, I’d really like to see what he concocts out of this mess of a movie.