Mumbai Xpress- Roller coaster breakdown

Mumbai Xpress opens with Vaiyapuri, Pasupathy and Dheena sitting and rehearsing their kidnap plan, a plan that sounds so incredibly stupid that it sets the perfect platform for some hilarious moments. Kamalhaasan, an innocent stunt bike driver is drawn by circumstance into this Baby’s Day Outish scheme and things begin to move in top gear and comic sequences cascade into one another. When things proceed at such a frenetic pace, you know that it is hard to keep the momentum going and things are bound to slow down. And that is precisely what happens when Kamalhaasan and Manisha meet, bringing in the weakest link of the screenplay. It seems as though Kamalhaasan stopped midway while writing the dialogues saying “Hold on! What the hell am I doing! This is Crazy Mohan’s job!” and decided to switch to a more familiar territory- emoting sentiments. An absolutely ridiculous love story is allowed to develop on such a fickle premise that if it was intended to be funny, it isn’t so and if it was intended to be serious, just how dumb did Kamalhaasan take his audience to be. It is not as though his comic hits are devoid of sentiment and melodrama. But the key element is that the melodrama has always been fleeting, never been allowed to linger, like “passing clouds”. The moment it stays longer than it should, it distracts the audience and ruins all the hard work done by the comedy.

But before I turn hypercritical, it is not as though Mumbai Xpress is without its moments. A horse that bites anything put before it, downright dumb questions with perfect timing from Vaiyapuri, a neat cameo by Ramesh Arvindh, deft play of words, the off-key school band and Kamalhaasan’s histrionics- particularly the facial expressions after the traffic cop encounter make for some great entertainment. People have been raving about Pasupathy’s role, but I for one feel that there is no major difference in his acting. Rather, it is one hell of an intelligent and innovative casting. The reasoning is quite simple-take Pasupathy, a fabulous actor who has been typecast in serious, negative roles. On screen, people around him have always feared him making him appear the villain. Take the same Pasupathy, give him an almost similar role, but, this time make the people around him absolute bungling idiots, who frustrate him, make him bang his head in exasperation and Voila! Humour is born. (Wow! I am amazed at my own genius in coming up with this!).

Towards the end of the movie, Kamal decides to redeem himself by jump-starting the comedy track again but the novelty, which was present in the beginning, disappears. Mistaken identities and misinterpretations, clichéd they may be, nevertheless provide comic relief after definitely avoidable deviations. Nasser, Santhanabarathy and Sharad Saxena come and go in neat roles and in true Kamalhassan style the movie ends breaking one of Tamil cinema’s unwritten rules-that characters who lust after money should either be evil or funny. When they are neither, like Manisha is, it leaves a lot of untied ends and a dissatisfied audience. One cannot help but be reminded of Thiruda Thiruda when in the end both Prashant and Anand ditch Heera for the loot and the credits roll on this light hearted, unambiguous note. But in Mumbai Xpress, the end is abrupt and hasty and a lot of questions, particularly involving Manisha’s change of heart remain unanswered. It doesn’t make much sense to question the logic in a funny movie, but some things in Mumbai Xpress are too glaring to be ignored.

It is good to hear that this movie has been shot in digital format, which saves the producers a packet, but it is not as good to see. The picture does appear blurred and grainy at times and I am ignorant of the technical fundas behind whether that happens due to bad filming or bad projection. On the whole, Mumbai Xpress starts quite promisingly in top gear but loses steam in the middle only to struggle and chug past the end. The magic of the Singeetham-Kamal combination is there, but it is patchy and does not last the entire movie. That is possibly because when Singeetham made Michael Madana Kama Rajan, Kamal was more of an actor, less of a director, or a screenplay,dialogue writer. But today it is difficult differentiating all these inextricably intertwined entities in him. He is almost like one body with many heads, someone who is amazing to watch on screen, but difficult to direct from behind it.