By the time I flipped to the Vasantham channel, this movie was already running midway, mid-scene where a pretty important character- a politician of some sort- was telling off a meek and subservient guard over something. I don't know precisely what.
But that's the beauty of interesting movies.
You can start watching from any Act, start watching from any scene and sooner or later you'll get the gist of it. Good subtitling works too. :)
It didn't take me long to realize that the whole- and I mean the whole- story was set on a train. So basically, it's one train, many areas on the train, many passengers, many stories. It helps that the fictional journey was long enough... from Delhi to Chennai. That's almost right across the whole continent of India, I think.
So you have a couple of characters on the train, and you have a couple of characters off the train. There's Saroja- the makeup artist to a famous actress but who aspires to be a singer. There's Poochi- his real name is rather long, but for most of the show he's affectionately called Poochi- a beverage vendor who falls in love with Saroja on first sight and so pretends to have a contact in the music industry just so he can have a reason to interact with her. There's the guard that I came upon, a pretty put-down one, if I must say, who works for the politician, a Minister of Something. And then because Poochi is a beverage vendor, you get a whole bunch of lively colleagues in the beverage cart as well, including the loud-talking manager whom his subordinates later play a trick on.
There's crisis, of course, which leads to action. Crisis comes in the form of a train robbery, and though the robbers kill no one (I think so), the retiring train driver has a heart attack and falls and as he does so, he hits the lever which sends the train hurtling forward at breakneck speed. And somehow the doors are locked and so no one can get into the driver's cabin, and then for some reason Saroja is stuck outside on the edge of the train and of course, Poochi goes out to get her. The robbers are outside atop the train too and now the media sweeps in and as each broadcast gets out, the speculation rises.
First that there's a terrorist attack of kidnapping (because the minister is inside) and then the terrorists have taken over the train and then that they are outside on the roof and because Saroja is there, speculation grows that she's the leader of the terrorists, and in come these experts seated in the studio who weigh in on all the reasons and analyze and all that. Then of course, the police and everyone else stationed at the main controls come in.
But that doesn't stop the train. And Saroja can't get in, try as she might, and the train is going over this bridge that's so old it's gonna collapse if any train goes over at high speed, so there's the tension building up there. They cross that barrier, the terrorists have fallen off and so all's good, until they realize that they have to slow down the train somewhat, otherwise it's gonna crash into the station and all the onboard passengers will be killed.
So it's Poochi to the rescue. Armed with nothing but a walkie-talkie, he does this thing that even engineers will find it hard to do, which is to separate the front from the rest of the carriages.
That's the gist of the whole movie.
Minus the parts where Saroja discovered Poochi's lie, and the big-talking beverage manager ends up being mistaken for being a terrorist for all the (meaningless) threats he's making, and the part where the guard loses his gun cos he passes out... and all the little nibblets and snackables in between. Including the cameo of a very, very adorable shihtzu!!! :)
I pretty much enjoyed Thodari.
Few are the movies that can feature a multitude of themes within a seamless plot, and Thodari capitulates on quite a few. It's all mainly poking fun at themselves, but hey, pretty good a job... you got romance, you got heroism, you got music, you got dancing, you got bad singing, you got the ordinary citizen, you got media frenzy, you got train corridors, you got beverage vendors, you got media industry, you got the dangers of media speculation, you got politics, you got bureaucracy, you got the politician, you got counter-terrorism, you got retirement, you got robbery.
All centered on a single, long train ride.
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| poster. copyright Sathya Jothi Films |
You can start watching from any Act, start watching from any scene and sooner or later you'll get the gist of it. Good subtitling works too. :)
It didn't take me long to realize that the whole- and I mean the whole- story was set on a train. So basically, it's one train, many areas on the train, many passengers, many stories. It helps that the fictional journey was long enough... from Delhi to Chennai. That's almost right across the whole continent of India, I think.
So you have a couple of characters on the train, and you have a couple of characters off the train. There's Saroja- the makeup artist to a famous actress but who aspires to be a singer. There's Poochi- his real name is rather long, but for most of the show he's affectionately called Poochi- a beverage vendor who falls in love with Saroja on first sight and so pretends to have a contact in the music industry just so he can have a reason to interact with her. There's the guard that I came upon, a pretty put-down one, if I must say, who works for the politician, a Minister of Something. And then because Poochi is a beverage vendor, you get a whole bunch of lively colleagues in the beverage cart as well, including the loud-talking manager whom his subordinates later play a trick on.
There's crisis, of course, which leads to action. Crisis comes in the form of a train robbery, and though the robbers kill no one (I think so), the retiring train driver has a heart attack and falls and as he does so, he hits the lever which sends the train hurtling forward at breakneck speed. And somehow the doors are locked and so no one can get into the driver's cabin, and then for some reason Saroja is stuck outside on the edge of the train and of course, Poochi goes out to get her. The robbers are outside atop the train too and now the media sweeps in and as each broadcast gets out, the speculation rises.
First that there's a terrorist attack of kidnapping (because the minister is inside) and then the terrorists have taken over the train and then that they are outside on the roof and because Saroja is there, speculation grows that she's the leader of the terrorists, and in come these experts seated in the studio who weigh in on all the reasons and analyze and all that. Then of course, the police and everyone else stationed at the main controls come in.
But that doesn't stop the train. And Saroja can't get in, try as she might, and the train is going over this bridge that's so old it's gonna collapse if any train goes over at high speed, so there's the tension building up there. They cross that barrier, the terrorists have fallen off and so all's good, until they realize that they have to slow down the train somewhat, otherwise it's gonna crash into the station and all the onboard passengers will be killed.
So it's Poochi to the rescue. Armed with nothing but a walkie-talkie, he does this thing that even engineers will find it hard to do, which is to separate the front from the rest of the carriages.
That's the gist of the whole movie.
Minus the parts where Saroja discovered Poochi's lie, and the big-talking beverage manager ends up being mistaken for being a terrorist for all the (meaningless) threats he's making, and the part where the guard loses his gun cos he passes out... and all the little nibblets and snackables in between. Including the cameo of a very, very adorable shihtzu!!! :)
I pretty much enjoyed Thodari.
Few are the movies that can feature a multitude of themes within a seamless plot, and Thodari capitulates on quite a few. It's all mainly poking fun at themselves, but hey, pretty good a job... you got romance, you got heroism, you got music, you got dancing, you got bad singing, you got the ordinary citizen, you got media frenzy, you got train corridors, you got beverage vendors, you got media industry, you got the dangers of media speculation, you got politics, you got bureaucracy, you got the politician, you got counter-terrorism, you got retirement, you got robbery.
All centered on a single, long train ride.