Source : INDIA TODAY NEWS
Actor Vishal’s directorial debut has hardly been a bed of roses. His journey behind the camera began in 2020, when he took over Thupparivaalan 2 after a fallout with director Mysskin, who had helmed the first film. Despite Vishal taking charge, the project never saw the light of day.
Cut to 2026, and Vishal finally makes his directorial debut with Magudam. Ironically, the film has a backstory not entirely different from Thupparivaalan 2. Following creative differences, Vishal took over the film from director Ravi Arasu. Unlike Thupparivaalan 2, however, Magudam did make it to theatres.
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But after sitting through three hours and five minutes of Vishal’s directorial debut, one question lingers: Should Magudam have suffered the same fate as Thupparivaalan 2?
For any film, the story matters. But in Magudam, the idea seems to be simple: stack one random scene after another, cook up a father-son story, throw in every possible cliche and set it against the backdrop of the coastal cargo and smuggling business. Add two heroines, split the second half into multiple chapters and sprinkle in some tasteless jokes, painfully rhyming dialogues and atrocious visual effects. What you’re left with is three hours and five minutes of Magudam — a thoroughly torturous experience.
Like the story, which jumps across multiple timelines, our attention also keeps shifting — from the big screen to the phone screen. Magudam revolves around a father-son conflict at its core. The first half establishes Kirubhakaran (Vishal as the son), a simple, middle-class husband and father who prefers to steer clear of unnecessary trouble. Then there is Linga, also played by Vishal (as the father) in a dual role — a ‘good gangster’ who controls the Visakhapatnam harbour.
For much of the first half, father and son remain worlds apart. The rest of Magudam is essentially about what happened between them and why they are separated. The premise may be dated, but a sharper screenplay and stronger treatment could have elevated it to some extent. Unfortunately, neither Vishal’s writing nor his direction finds a way to hold your attention. The filmmaking is so lacklustre that it becomes frustrating.
It is especially disappointing when you consider how many aspiring directors with strong scripts and better filmmaking instincts are waiting for their chance to make a first film. Vishal, meanwhile, is an established actor and producer with years of experience in the industry. Yet, the final product is so underwhelming that the bar is not even visible.
Continuity errors, jarring visual effects, bad makeup and several scenes that add little to the story further drag the film down. Among the two female leads, Anjali gets the more substantial role as Annapoorni, the leader of a fish sellers’ union at the Visakhapatnam harbour. Her romantic track with Linga may not offer anything particularly fresh, but at least Annapoorni is written with some agency.
Dushara Vijayan, on the other hand, gets a frustratingly one-note character. She plays a mother of two whose primary purpose seems to be eating. She eats at home, she eats at car showrooms and she eats wherever the film takes her. And when she isn’t eating, she is yelling at her husband. That, essentially, is the extent of the character.
Vishal himself fares unevenly across his dual role. As the younger, middle-class son, the distinction he draws — the diffidence, the reluctance to court trouble — is convincing enough to hold the film’s quieter stretches together. But as the father, Linga, it all falls apart. The makeup and wig work are disaster-grade, never letting you forget you’re watching an actor in a costume rather than a character. The dubbing makes it worse still, sitting oddly out of sync with what’s on-screen.
Neither the direction nor the performances, nor even GV Prakash’s music, can save the painful mess that Magudam is. It is a film that would have been better left in the 1940s. And for Vishal, this directorial debut might have been better left behind too.
– Ends
SOURCE :- TIMES OF INDIA
