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Rediff.com  » Movies » Rajadhi Raja is crude

Rajadhi Raja is crude

By Pavithra Srinivasan
May 18, 2009 13:36 IST
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Everybody wants to be a Rajnikanth these days, and the fastest way is to ape his speech, laughter, style and, preferably his (diluted) storyline. Which is what Cinema Paradise's Tamil film Rajadhi Raja, directed by Shakthi Chidambaram, complete with an A certificate does, except that it comes with a "Low Class King" tagline, crude jokes, cheap tricks and enough double entendre dialogues to satisfy the most rabid of front-benchers.

Not that you expect much from the director and Raghava Lawrence, anyway. The title cards, Karunaas's screaming, hero-worshipping music and the first ten minutes give you a pretty good idea of what to expect.

It gets more crass with Raja (Raghava Lawrence) carrying out a promise made to his father to raise his three elder brothers (!) and make them a doctor, a policeman and a lawyer, respectively! No questions asked about why the youngest has to sacrifice his education to raise the older ones. A supremely silly voice-over informs us that Raja "works very hard and educates his brothers," with a few mandatory shots of him wiping lorry windscreens.

Within no time, Raja has grown into a jeans-wearing, towel-draping stylish young man with a great haircut, dancing all over his village. He romances in the most erotic fashion by a whole host of heroines (Kamna, Snikta and Meenakshi) while an irate Krishnamurthy (Karunas) follows up with a jealous act.

But the cream of the cast is undoubtedly Saidhai Sailaja (Mumtaz -- who looks really great after a long time), a high-profile minister, but spouts pure, unadulterated garbage and cavorts with her henchmen in beautiful saris and forms the evil villainess of the story.

Naturally, you can't have three ideal brothers who work undeterred for the good of society, so our hero finds out that they're really not the unselfish men he thought they were. That's where the story proper (!) begins.

With Kanal Kannan's great stunts and some fillip with SFX, Raghava Lawrence flips through the air a la Superman, bashes up a hundred goons and apes Rajni every spare moment  but you can't deny that he's a cool dancer and has a flair for comedy. As it is, his heroisms make you laugh more than the actual comedy track.

Karunaas, at least, knows his limitations. The heroines, especially the Namitha-look alike, exist merely for erotic dances, sighs and moans. They fulfill their part, even if they make you squirm.

There's no doubt though, that Shakthi Chidambaram knows exactly what his target audience is and has set out to fulfill all their expectations.

For sheer, mind-numbing crudity, there's no equal to Rajadhi Raja. Leave all logic behind as you watch this.

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Pavithra Srinivasan