Rajini Murugan review: Sivakarthikeyan-starrer a comedy in ruins

Rajini Murugan

Director: Ponram

Cast: Sivakarthikeyan, Keerthy Suresh, Rajkiran, Samuthirakani, Soori

Rating: 1/5

Often it seems that Tamil cinema has no middle path. While some films have riveting plots and bold approaches, including rural settings and costumes, others beat the cliched path with humour that is not always a rib-tickler. Ponram’s Rajini Murugan falls into the second category -- describing itself as a comedy -- trying to tell us a threadbare of a story, but packing it with a bewildering variety of subjects, which stretch from neglect of parents to land grabbing to romance conveyed over songs, dances and buffoonery.

Hero Sivakarthikeyan’s (played as Rajini Murugan, named after the superstar) sidekick, Soori (as Soori) delivers several punches, but most of them fall flat. For, they have been there in an endless number of movies.

Rajinimurugan trailer: Meet Sivakarthikeyan, the comic hero

Rajini Murugan has a childhood sweetheart, Karthika Devi (Keerthy Suresh), who has been banned from meeting him after an innocent childhood prank when the two locked themselves inside a room. The girl’s father has been livid since then, refusing to talk to a now adult Rajini Murugan and even his father. The two men were once best pals.

Watch Rajini Murugan trailer here:

Now if this is not enough of trash, we have actor Samuthirakani playing a local thug in Madurai (yet again the same setting) trying to grab the crores-worth ancestral property of Rajini Murugan’s grandfather (Rajkiran), and into this mess arrives a motley group of relatives from abroad -- some foreigners included who seem to have the vaguest idea about local crimes and customs.

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Rajini Murugan packs in a bewildering variety of subjects, from neglect of parents to land grabbing to romance conveyed over songs, dances and buffoonery. (RajiniMurugan2015/Facebook)

Poorly acted out by Sivakarthikeyan, the film has, though, a couple of other performers, Samuthirakani and Rajkiran, who engage us with a touch of excellence. Certainly, Samuthirakani deserves meatier parts, and Soori, like comedian Santhanam, an image makeover.