When I took a flying catch of the Ananda Vikatan which the paperwala threw to my balcony, today morning, I flipped through the pages fast to see what Vikatan had to say about S J Surya‘s New. (Un)Fortunately, Vikatan did sport a review of New this week and I am upset about the biased outlook of the popular Tamil media, especially Vikatan. Keeping this discussion to the fag end of this review, New is a movie filled with gross vulgarity and intense close-up cleavage shots. Last week, on Saturday, when I watched New in the Udhayam theatre, I felt it had nothing new in it except that it’s a pretentious flick in form of a breakthrough science fiction film.
Over two years in production, this movie started with Ajith and Jyothika as the lead pair. Due to untold reasons both of them moved out of the movie, so S J Surya decided to star himself along with Simran. There is a rumor that Surya told the story to A R Rahman in a Chennai-Mumbai flight. The excited Rahman then agreed to tune for the movie.
All that details aside, New is inspired(?) from the Tom Hanks and the beautiful Elizabeth Perkins starrer Big where a 5th grade kid wishes to a festival wishing machine and the next day morning the kid becomes Big as Tom Hanks. With a mind of a kid, Tom Hanks goes through the adolescence and also manages to get a girl friend in this process and finally he becomes a kid again. This story added with some garam masala, customizing for tamil/telugu audience(!) has become as NEW. Having enjoyed S J Surya’s direction in Vaali and Kushi, though both have some shades of other movies, I was completely disappointed in the route S J Surya has taken to ensure that the film is a success.
The only solace is some intelligent screenplay tricks that he has managed to do and the MTV type music videos with the help of A R Rahman. Full scores for Surya for the picturisation of the songs. Great job. And A R Rahman with rocking tunes like New, Sakkarai and the Amma song. SPB‘s comes back in the Sakkarai Inikkira Sakkarai song. The experimental spiderman song also gets full points.
S J Surya, stars as a man with a kid’s mind. New to the front-of-camera, he wades through the character and passes it. But one always gets a feeling that he could have done this rather comical character better that what it is. His intonations at times don’t go with his body language. Simran does her role convincingly well.
The movie is clouded with explicit dialogues and unnatural bedroom situations, which gives the viewers some time to enjoy. But every time when people clap for such scenes, I have no idea, where the Tamil cinema is heading for. I am definitely not against sexually explicit scenes in Tamil movies. We can be as explicit as possible but vulgarity or unnecessary comical scenes that make one get a sick feeling about the humor sense of people can be avoidable. You can either make a healthy comedy out of sex or make it seem crazy. This one belongs to the later category. Especially when the kid gets a devilish idea and leans on Simran in the auto, the scene where Surya explains what happens in the bed with Simran, Balaji making explicit visual descriptions while saying Kiran to Simran and when Surya talks about Simran to Karunas are some of the avoidable scenes. These are just scenes. A huge array of dialogues have also found their way through the censors.
The movie is already a hit and there is no way the media can oppose it. Because when people bend their heads towards the movie, the media too has to go by it. Ananda Vikatan, which out rightly rejected to review Shankar’s Boys and just said ‘Chee…’ as the review for Boys, has given 34 marks to New. Now isn’t that being unbiased. Vikatan also drops a line that because this movie is just about a husband/wife relationship and not exploting the curiosity of adolescence, the movie is ok to be reviewed. I hate to call this as a husband/wife bedroom story. This one talks about a eight year kid, getting transformed into a 28 year old guy’s body and getting a baby. Also the review compares Surya’s acting skills with that of Jim Carrey. Huh !. The TV media says New is a new experiment and people have accepted it. So much for the experiment, guys. Poor Shankar who got flamed in Boys for showing the reality.
Calling all the dads/moms who walked out of cinema halls of Shankar’s Boys, for a viewing of this New. Watch it, Enjoy it. Sure, it doesn’t show any of the real things what your teenage boy/girl does. It doesn’t show how they date girls in mahabalipuram, it hides the fact that they read porno books, it also doesn’t call love as the function of a teenage mind. It doesn’t show any of those realistic expressions. It’s fiction. So enjoy dudes!.
kirukkal.com 
20 responses to “Absolutely Gross and Nothing New”
Whoa!! Geek finally told what I thought exactly. People are hypocrites. So film directors are also enjoying.
There is no wrong on S.J.Surya. he is a good seller. I am sure the geek agrees with me. It’s the public who should be kicked.
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Agreed Geek,I was actually waiting for your take on this movie.For me the whole movie looked very much silly and cheap,though i feel that close-ups of cleavages are becoming very much regular in Tamil cinema,ppl have stopped calling them explicit i think.
Anyway my review(?) on this movie is here…
http://www.mouthshut.com/readreview/58446-1.html
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bleh i havent seen new yet..and i dont want to after reading this review. But I did watch that thirai vimarsanam abt new today while swapping channels during the match that india just lost to pakistan, and this guy claims its a family movie. eh? wth? Exactly my thoughts on the explicit content in tamil movies. Boys i felt was fine except for the girlfriend song where the “boys” go a little over the top, that as u said was sick and not funny.
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Agree Manoj, cleavages are all over tamil cinema including in songs and i don’t see people complaining. For me as long it’s Simrans cleavage then it worth the $$$. 😉
BTW the song ‘Sakkarai Inikkira Sakkarai’ was beautifully sung by SPB and Sujatha’. I’m not a big ARR fan but i think he did well for this song.Still listening to it.
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I wonder if this is a review of New or a defence of Boys. Grossier movies dont make gross movies any better! New is crap and so was Boys.
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Hey. Just because NEW became a hit doesnt mean that BOYS should have also been a hit.
And BOYS deserved that type of treatment. It is high time Shankar comes back to his senses. What started as muLLu theriyudhu veLLai puRa joing etc etc in gentleman went beyond limits in BOYS.
Tell me wasnt vaali, khushi vulgar? Ulle Veliye was the most vulgar movie ever made in TFM.
No point blaming director and producer. We all should stop watching such crap movies and automatically things will stop!
Let there be sex like it is in balumahendra’s movies. Not like what these shankar’s and surya’s do.
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My idea is not to defend boys. Boys is already out of theatres and me shouting for it doesn’t affect it in any case.
but the point why I made the comment on boys is that to re-instate that we don’t have bad memory and people do watch out for the pretensions in the media.
Boys is a cheap, vulgar movie or not is according to personal opinions. but a popular media shouldn’t be biased enough like this. If Vikatan can accept that it over reacted emotionally to Boys, I can take back this review.
But whatsoever, New was pretty cheap, vulgar and nasty at times. Something that I never found in Boys.
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Yes, i completely agree with lazygeek, NEW is a movie trying to sell itself with a cheap subject. The worst part being our audience have made it a hit. When i watched boys i hated some scenes but its def. not as cheap or vulgar as NEW, i really pity’ed all those folks who came to theatre with their families (u cant even watch it with your GF’s ). Even the original BIG, had only a few sequences of tomhanks sleeping with his girlfriend. But this one is more explicit, vulgar and nasty. The worst part being vikatan trying to prove/validate those scenes, horrible. Im wondering where are those ppl esp. ladies associations who raised so much noise for boys(movie abt teenaged guys) and not for NEW(supposed to be a kid’s movie).
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Oh Yes. Vikatan has been highly biased with this review. They should have neglected this movie like BOYS. Double Standards is bad!
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The movie is definitely vulgar and is a little better than a porno movie just bec of good music and a somewhat good screenplay which makes u sit till the end.I expected a kushi if not vaali(one of my fav tamil movie jus for the performance and screenplay and a cute jothika episode-i am an ardent fan of jo) from surya.
Picturisation Of Thottal Poo Malarum and sakakrai are good.Scenes involving villains and kiran are total telugu feel(Should we continue to use this telugu word.-The movie there is a flop.Looks like trends are reversing)
one point about Boys and New apart from agreeing on media bias,THE screenplay is better in new,atleast for the reason that viewers are waiting to see what happens(!!!) in the end to the story unlike in boys where we all know the groups of boys are going to succeed..!!!!.
Same AR Rahman,Same good songs picturisation etc.
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Mani,
We knew the whats going to happen in the end because of the lyrics of secret of success song which was a huge hit.
In New i felt the movie must have ended right at the interval.
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“…Ajith and Jyothika as the lead pair, Due to untold reasons both of them moved out of the movie.”
I heard, first Ajit moved out, and SJ Surya decided to fill in his space. And then, Jyotika moved out when she heard she had to play opposite SJ Surya.
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New is nothing new from one of earlier supposedly ‘A-‘rated flick called ‘Muthaliravay vaa vaa’. And by the way, what Baghyaraj did as ‘ilaimarai-kaaimarai’ in those ages (you must watch Mundaanai Mudichu or Ithu namma aalu), Shankar and SJ Surya replicate at this age. The chee-pirits are the same.
For those who claim, this is what people want and all that crap, let them watch Munnaibhai MBBS or Autograph…no need for too many cleavages or navel points.
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The movie is crap. A few women associations are protesting against the movie, but the theatres screening NEW is full of college girls.
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I have not seen the movie but can’t stand that AH’s face ..yuk..
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guys. Poor Shankar who got flamed in Boys for showing the reality.
yea .da guru .to hell with our people da..sariyana aatu mandhainga..call all those jerks who made big hue and cry about ‘boys’ and ask them to watch ‘new’ ,’fire’,murder,girfriend..’athu’ ithu…….and f..krs call it as an experiment..the only thing left is hard core ‘incest ‘..let us see..is it going to be in a hindi or a tamil movie first..
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Well said da senthil. Thats why I’m shouting that why should we have bad memory and why should everyone including the media be biased on this issue.
BTW, the harcore movie you suggested will be in hindi. thats what i can smell looking at the rate at which the hindi industry is ‘forward’ thinking.
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hmm..
my opinion exactly.
Boys had at the max 3 or 4 scenes that were vulgar and the entire movie got written off as cheap and indecent. Shankar got totally stoned for it. Maybe it was jus coz of the name “Shankar”.
People thronged to the theatres expecting a “family entertainer” (do they exist nowadays? An Autograph or a Munnabhai are few and far in between) and couldnt believe what they were seeing… jus coz of the name “Shankar”.
I found Boys quite entertaining and finally a chance for Shankar to do something that didnt have nething to do w/ Politics! ( Kadhalan-nu kekadhenga.. student politics, the governor 😉 )
But New.. actually I kinda found it fun too.. but there were a lot more scenes where i cringed. (Half our class had cut college and come to watch the movie.. in mixed company, it did get a bit embarassing..) Jus coz New showed those scenes in a funny way doesnt mean it makes it decent.
Ok, now I’m gettin totally confused! I guess I’ve wasted a whole lot of webspace and managed to convey nothing in the end! 🙂
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Even though, I agree in general, to your views about bias in reviews, I am really surprised that you choose to defend what was shown in Boys as “REALITY”.
I read your Boys review also and all you have done there is to defend it calling it reality. You have words like “honest”, “no-nonsense movie” etc to describe Boys.
For me, that is a really biased view of that movie when compared with your views about NEW and your related generalized comment on where Tamil Cinema and Tamil Viewers are leading to.
You are choosing to be the idealist here, but somehow dont seem to take that role while talking about BOYS.
Personally, BOYS is one of the (if not THE) worst mainstream movies that I have seen.
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I’m in full agreement in lazy geek. I must also say that I havent seen “New” yet. But I have a question regarding the film Boys — Did the titilating scenes of Boys mirror reality in our society? Boys was nothing short of a bold movie. Among our film critics Deepa Mehta’s Fire has been extolled as a bold movie. My question is –Whats so great about a subject that is rarely found in our country?
I’m sure every teenager will be able to relate to what is portrayed in boys – aspirations, angst, curousity of everything, first experiences etc. It must have shocked some I agree. We might have been prudish to not let our sisters or kids see it. But it hardly dimishes the greatness of the movie. Until we accept what we call the “emerging generation” we will unendingly call such movies crap. Period.
Arun
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