Tamil film 'Naadu' review: Ambitionless film is a tiresome watch
What's the story
The Tamil drama film Naadu—directed by M Saravanan—and starring Tharshan, Mahima Nambiar, and RS Shivaji—dropped on Amazon Prime Video on Thursday after completing its theatrical run. The film aspires to drive home a point about the lack of medical facilities and the grave healthcare situation in India's boondocks, but its lack of scale, momentum, and aspiration make it a drudged, dreary watch.
Story
This is what happens in 'Naadu'
The film, set in a South Indian village (which serves as an example of any village in rural India), is about a close-knit community grasping at straws due to the lack of a doctor in the area. Finally, a doctor arrives, and with her comes a ray of hope, but she, too, decides to eventually bow out, leaving the villagers dejected and exasperated.
#1
How much melodrama is too much?
Naadu is less a film and more an advertisement of glycerin, considering the amount of excessive melodrama that unabashedly courses through it. If one has to count the scenes featuring characters crying and the ones where they're not, the former would outnumber the latter. The film is impatient—desperate, rather—for our hearts to bleed for it, but the emotional beats simply don't land.
#2
More on its lack of emotions
Naadu begins with the villagers sitting together, shedding tears, and that foreshadows everything that's about to follow soon after. Despite dealing with heavy, dark, somber topics such as death, child marriage, pregnancy complications, cancer, and even suicide, it shockingly has no emotional heft, and at no point did my eyes well up for anyone. So many grim issues, but such terribly few genuine emotions.
#3
It suffers from a dreary screenplay
Naadu may have a good subject at its core—medical inadequacies in India are a rampant problem—but what it sorely lacks is a well-etched-out story that could have tied everything together. Unnecessary, ill-timed songs, the lack of character development, the decision to keep swerving the narrative tracks, and a lack of ambition to ever go beyond the premise bring Naadu to a screeching halt.
#4
Attempt at humor misfires; the end product isn't well-polished
The movie would take the prize if there were a contest of cruelly unfunny, dated jokes and plot choices. It's the kind of film where you can guess the next sequence of events half an hour ago, and unfortunately, the film will make no effort to prove you wrong. Juvenile and immature in its execution, it has very little going on for it.
Verdict
Not headache-inducing, but not worth watching either
Not every film needs to be mounted on a large scale—simplistic, straightforward storylines work just as fine (Malayalam films often do this expertly). With Naadu, however, its needless melodrama and lack of flesh to put over its bones becomes its biggest undoing. Points for its subject matter and a meaty role for Nambiar, sure, but only good themes don't make engaging films. 2/5 stars.