Bakkiyaraj Kannan’s ReMo (2016) Movie Review

Cast: Sivakarthikeyan, Keerthy Suresh, Sathish, Saranya Ponvannan, K S Ravikumar, Yogi Babu, Arunraja Kamaraj, Aadukalam Naren, Prata K Pothen, Sri Divya & Raju Sundaram
Music Composed by Anirudh Ravichander
Cinematography by P C Sreeram
Edited by Ruben
Directed by Bakkiyaraj Kannan
Censor Certificate: U & Runtime: 151 Minutes

If you have seen the first trailers of Remo, you pretty much know everything, what film is all about. When you actually see the film, you feel like you have already watched this before, in no. of cross dressed films in Tollywood.

After back to back hits as a distributor and producer, Dil Raju is back into the safe-bet dubbing business. The story of the film is all about how a typical happy-go-lucky hero tries to exploit his love with the typical mentally retarded heroine. Movie starts as aspiring actor SK (Sivakarthikeyan), tries to impress director K S Ravikumar for his sequel film to Bhammane Sathyabhamane (1996). He gets an opportunity to act, but demands to play a cross dressed romantic nurse and that’s the problem for SK, as he gets very queasy around girls. That’s when Kavya (Keerthy Suresh) walks into his life and Remo starts stalking the girl to love by saying lies and fraudulence. Remo later disguises as a woman and engrafts very things about the dude to whom Kavya is engaged to. As you might have predicted earlier, the dude turns out to be crumb and how SK succeeds in his love is all REMO with awful and flummoxed screenplay.

Remo is nothing without Sivakarthikeyan. Surpassing in every sphere from his fab mannerisms, dance and energy act as a woman, or his comic timing or convincing us of his commitment to win the love of his life. Sivakarthikeyan is superb. Keerthy as an innocent doctor is pretty as well, and the lead actors share, crackling equation. Satish did another lengthy role in this movie and he entertains partly. Mottai Rajendran and Yogi Babu are alright in their short roles. Saranya Ponvannan is adequate as mother of Sivakarthikeya.

The story of Remo is stale as we have seen similar stories and similar treatment in many movies. The concept of struggling actor cross dressing up like an woman to win is been inspired by Hollywood film Tootsie (1982), an actor impersonating a nurse in a hospital to impress a woman is similar to The black sheep of Whitehall (1942) a dude cross dressing to impress his girlfriend sequences reminds us of Telugu film Madam (1994). The director Bakkiyaraj Kannan, who showed lack of skill in establishing characters and directing the first half, comes with decent masala moments in the second half, but the old fashioned point and treatment mars the movie. The writer director could have used some logic and the film wouldn’t have been this silly. Just for few examples, (Spoilers Ahead) what is the source of income for Siva’s home? How was he able to afford this foreign prosthetic make up daily? With few loose dialogues and mimicry can anyone join Hospital without proper training? How was Shiva able to spend huge amounts on balloons, Chinese flying lanterns on the proposal day? As these were not enough the director even tries to wrongly showcase the youth that boys love is divine and girls always cheat. Coming to other technicalities, the cinematography provide some respite, thanks to P C Sreeram’s experience and talent in using lighting techniques. Especially the scene, where Sivakarthikeyan walks in the specially decorated lights and proposes Keerthy Suresh deserves an applause. Music by Anirudh Ravichander is filled with some rocking notes and his BGM is noteworthy, you listen to no sharp notes in this repertoire and the editing by Ruben is terrible. Even after trimming 15 minutes from the dubbing version, it made no effect to the overall film anyway. Dialogues by Rajesh A Moorthy are appropriate. CG shots should have been better (especially in the important proposal sequence).

To sum it up, ReMo once again proves me that all the regional films succeed at box office can’t be qualified as good cinema. I learn this, at least after watching ReMo that rigs flummoxed script, a dreadfully long cross dressed plotline and very tenuous treatment.

Survi Review: 1.5/5