Raja Rani (2013)

English translation: King and Queen
Director: Atlee
Story: Atlee
Cast: Arya, Jai, Nayantara, Nazriya 
Music: G.V. Prakash
Time: 159 minutes
Bottom-line: Delivers a good message, which could have been provided 40 minutes sooner

Atlee’s debut film, Raja Rani, for the first half, seems like a normal romantic comedy, but by the end of the film, it has a lingering impact on you. After Boss Engira Bhaskaran, Arya, Nayantara and Santhanam join hands in this film, with Sathyaraj, Nazriya Nazim, Jai and Sathyan playing the other lead roles. The film’s screen time is 159 minutes, which could have considerably been reduced, to about 120 minutes. But, the message delivered almost makes up for the other flaws of the film.

The film begins with the lines: There is life after love failure, which changes to there is love after love failure. John (Arya) and Regina (Nayantara) are about to get married in a church. While saying their oaths, Regina, by mistake, says ‘Surya’ instead of John, and her father (Sathyaraj) faints in the church. They however get married, only to lead an unhappy life. John comes home late every night, drunk, and disturbing his wife and neighbours. One night, Regina has fits. When John asks her if she has suffered from fits before, she recalls the story of her former love, Surya (Jai), a person working at a call-centre. Eventually they fall in love and decide to marry, much to the discontent of Surya’s father. However, Regina’s life hits the rocks in a few days. Later in the story, John’s friend Sarathy (Santhanam) tells Regina the story of John’s former love, Keerthana (Nazriya). The rest of the story covers how the lives of John and Regina change, after hearing about each other’s flashbacks.

Arya as John, and Nayantara as Regina 

The story starts off as a comedy, with John’s drunken behaviour and Santhanam’s dialogues creating lots of laughs. Until the end of Regina’s flashback, the story seems off beat and lame. The story of Regina and Jai is really boring: few useless jokes by Sathyan and lots of useless and time-consuming dialogues that are supposed to make us laugh. John’s and Keerthana’s story is as boring. It is only by the end of these flashbacks that the whole story has some meaning and depth. The story of John and Regina is overall, good, but has meaning only towards the end. So basically, in all the tracks, Atlee gives a useless start, but provides a fairly good ending to all of them. the twist towards the end of the story is unexpected, and that was a nice touch by Atlee. Importantly, Raja Rani is one of the most realistic films in Tamil that I have seen; the twists, romance and other elements are very believable.

Jai as Surya, with Nayantara

Nayantara’s acting was surprisingly good, considering her previous performance in Boss Engira Bhaskaran, where too she played alongside Arya. On the other hand, the second heroine, Nazriya’s performance, was horrible. She is new to Kollywood, but she could have done better. Arya has acted superbly, while Jai’s acting was very poor. Arya has done well to express sadness, drunken behaviour and happiness equally well. When you see the way Jai cries you only laugh; his crying neither sounds nor feels real. Santhanam, well, his role is to provide jokes, and he does that well. Few of his jokes have proper timing, but most of his jokes don’t provide the laughs, unlike Boss Engira Bhaskaran. However, this is one film where Santhanam also plays an emotional role, instead of just being a comedian. G.V. Prakash’s score is splendid, but the songs are not appealing. The songs also add to the screen time, and no song was actually needed. But well, in Tamil cinema, songs contribute to the earnings, and very few directors make films without them.

Nazriya as Keerthana

The message, however, is a valuable one. As Santhanam says (probably one of the few good lines he has said in films), “If all people stop living after a love failure, all of us would die by the age of 22.” We often hear of many suicides because love failure. When there are seven billion people in the world, why should you commit suicide because of one person?? The way in which the film shows this message is excellent, but it would have been much more effective if the message had been provided 40 minutes earlier, as I said. Another issue the film deals with is that of love marriages and arranged marriages. In India, both cases exist, and in the film, both types are shown. John and Keerthana fell in love and got married, and similarly Regina and Surya also fell in love and then got married. But John and Regina had an arranged marriage. How their lives go on after marriages is what is shown in the film.

To sum up, Atlee’s Raja Rani is an entertaining family drama, that may feel bored in the beginning, but as the story goes on, it gets interesting and meaningful. Arya and Nayantara have acted well, but Jai and Nazriya could have improved. A valuable message is delivered, but if delivering the message was the main aim of Atlee, he could have done a slightly better job.

My Rating: 3/5