180 – utter rubbish!

I have half a mind to rubbish the whole film off. It was definitely rubbish. But there is more to the film that needs to be said. In the rest of the post, you are not going to find anything good about this film (barring a couple of things, perhaps). So, if that’s okay with you, read on.

To begin with, there is nothing new about this film. We’ve seen it a million times in gazillion forms. From Nenjil Or Aalayam and Vaazhve Maayam to Manasellam, we have seen and heard stories about protagonists suffering from fatal illnesses. This film makes no attempt to even tell the story differently. The same stunt to start on a happy note, go back and forth in the disguise of memories and then end in pseudo-profound ambiguity.

There is one do-gooder. A girl falls in love with him. He ignores her. She hurts herself. He travels across the globe to save her. He has pancreatic cancer. He dumps her (and his wife) and goes away to play ball in Brazil! That’s it. No more. No less.

Mano or Ajay or AJ or whatever (played by Siddharth after a long gap in Tamil) takes just some washing and ironing clothes to impress Vidya (played by Nithya Menen who looks just the same as she used to while I’ve seen her in college) who is a photo journalist. Ignoring the fact that photo journalist is the new software engineer in Tamil cinema, her role is so flimsy. She speaks so little, settles for much less and says she ‘doesn’t care’ that AJ is already married.

While we are on AJ’s marriage, his wife Renuka (this scrawny Priya Anand) is even worse. She falls in love with her doctor because he brings her filter coffee. She is annoying and her mimicry skills are terrible. She adds no real value, perhaps because her character is as flimsy as every other character in the film.

AJ is the hero. He is the sacrificial man who dumps his wife so she doesn’t have to deal with the fact that he is suffering from cancer. He runs away and comes ‘home’ from America. He learns from a little boy in Varanasi how not to fear death and then starts ‘living’. He pays all his bills in advance and hangs around aimlessly. As handsome as he may be, he is a waste of space. No real charm and no smart lines.

If I were to see this as a film about romance, there are no romantic moments. There is not a single scene that is ‘awww’ worthy. If this film is about ‘living in the present’, you don’t get the point until AJ himself mentions it on a bus ride (which you wait for after watching all the promos). If this is about fatal diseases, not for a moment to you feel sympathy or empathy.

AJ annoys you with his over-reaction when he discovers he has cancer (now don’t argue I’d never know how it feels. It is annoying. Period). The African American man playing ‘death’ AJ is a disgrace to human thinking!

If you put a gun to my head and I have to say something nice about 180, I’d choose the cinematography and (to an extent) the music. The colours are pleasant to the eyes and the people do look beautiful. Vuvuzela is shot well, I have to admit. However, it seems too long and is the beginning to a million songs that follow.

In all, 180 is trashy. Bad thought process, loose screenplay, too many clichés and over-acting people. This is the film you go to when you are looking to have an undisturbed conversation. You can talk your heart out and nothing would have changed!

13 responses

  1. Priya Anand was not scrawny…..she looked fabulous….

  2. and about the overall movie review…i agree with u..

  3. Just read this post today and this one can be copy-pasted as-it-is except for the characters and the title for your next post on yesterday’s play, I guess 😛

  4. Sarath Avatar
    Sarath

    Hey, I saw 180 in tamil…and i must say though i wasn’t too impressed…its a really likable film in some aspects,and the photography and romance of the film was shown in a spectacular way!
    But then again,jus my opinion…!

    Regards,
    Sarath

  5. I was taken in by the first 15 min. or so of the film (particularly that lovely 1st song) and was looking forward to settling down to enjoy a good movie, but then the movie did a 180 turn. From the mysterious, live for the moment, rule-busting Mano and the thoughtful, down to earth, natural beauty Vidya who falls for his noncomformity (which was making for a cute love story for me), we suddenly find out that Mano is actually boring, shallow NRI doctor Ajay who fell in love with and married the utterly unbearable, annoying, fake barbie doll with no substance, Renuka (never a more boring love story have I seen in my life). I completely agree with you that the Black “Death” character was a disgrace! The subject of facing death as a young person was treated with no depth whatsoever. They should have taken some lessons from the Canadian movie, One Week. It would have been interesting if when faced with death, Ajay suddenly realizes that it is his inane, shallow life that has made him sick in the first place and that his leaving is a conscious choice that he makes for himself, rather than a silly sacrifice to someone he claims to love too much to see suffer. Btw, she seemed to get over his apparent suicide pretty quickly! Maybe the love that finds him when he begins to be true to himself is the one that will see him to the end of his days. That would have been a good movie. Too bad. I feel like Siddharth is screwing up his career. He needs to choose better.

    1. Lakshmi i totally disagree..please don’t impose your views!

      1. Hey!

        She can say what she wants to say and you are welcome to disagree. This is my blog. All views are welcome here.

    2. On Siddharth, I somehow get a feeling Kaadhalil Sothappuvadhu Eppadi will be much the same. It is a fear actually. I hoping I’d be proven wrong.

      1. Okay,I’m sorry….but it was a worth the watch and siddharth,though i’m not a huge fan hasn’t compromised on commercialism and didn’t not bank on his boyyish immature image,in this film and that aspect itself is quite a welcome-change.

  6. 🙂

  7. and..It was really nice to come back to a blog to talk about what i wrote almost 8 months ago.. 🙂

    1. 🙂 you should keep coming back. 🙂

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