CHOO CHOO MAARI - review of the film "POO"

Without Wax- sans cere- sincere- Sincerity - That is the word. Sincerity- The quality which almost every tamil film maker including the legendary Kamal Haasan seems to be missing these days. And it has come out finally, now, from a totally unexpected corner. From a man named Sasi and a dumbster of an actor called Srikanth. Sasi - the director who made average flicks like Roja Kootam - an urban romance with super cool songs, Dishoom -dealing with the life and love of a stuntman, Sollamale - a half baked movie where the protagonist pretends to be dumb(oomai) to get the heroine's sympathy(... she falls in love...) and in the climax he is forced to cut his tongue to prove his love for her.

From the man who made all these movies which can best be described as average cinema, comes POO - a simple yet enthralling ''one-way romance'' saga with startling performances from the lead cast. There are cliche's a plenty, like the standard village setting, the fact that a girl is in love with her thaai maaman right from childhood, and last but not the least - the typical "village-childhood" song which we have been watching in every Thangar Bachan film and even got to see in Veyil and in Ameer's Parutheeveran.

But the essence of the movie however is the purity of love that 'Maari' (played by a stunningly different from how she looks in real life, Parvathy- The otherwise fair cute girl from Kerala, has totally tanned herself and made significant changes in mannerisms, language, dialect and body language to look the part) has for Thangaraasu (srikanth - underplaying beautifully) - the boy she was introduced to as her 'will be husband' when she was as young as four years old. After school Maari works in a factory in the village and Thangaraasu goes off to study engineering in the city but Maari continues dreaming about him. In a super-symbolic directing effort, what we see is that in all her dreams, Maari only gets to touch Thangaraasu's hand and no other part of his body, and vice versa - This is later explained to her by a friend that probably they are meant only to be friends and nothing more than that - for which Maari is more than upset and ends up injuring her friend.

The movie starts with Maari's marriage life (she is married to some one else) and so, we know that Thangaraasu is not gonna be her man, but how the events unfold is what matters and the narrative holds us through it perfectly.

There are stand out scenes and characterisations - The climax is definitely the best scene in the film - Maari who cares for thangaraasu's well being even after knowing that he is married to someone else, cries her heart out on finding that his wife ill treats him to the core. This one scene brings out the whole essense of this wonderful love story. Close behind is the scene where Thangarasu has to make a decision on whom to marry and decides against marrying Maari when he finds out that kids from an inter-family marriage may not be healthy. The character of Thangaraasu's father is super-clearly etched out- the manasthan father who has oodles of self respect and plenty of dreams about his son, which fall flat when he is informed that a course in mechanical engineering in an arbit college will not fetch heavy salaries.

The songs are not spead breakers and are wonderful to listen too. This is a rare genre-specific cinema and does not act like its commercial-crappy counterparts which boast of action, romance, sentiments (what the fuck is sentiments supposed to mean?). This film is pure romance, pure innocent, heart warming. - Poo is a semi-classic.

Kudos to Sasi, who made a 5 and a half page short story look this well planned on silver screen.


POO gets 4 stars out of 5. From Nishanth himself - which means the movie is really good.