Raavanan

Saw the movie yesterday (had an early getaway from office citing my birthday as reason) in Tamil.

I can see why people dont like the hindi version. I did not like the tamil version either. A big dissappointment from Mani.

What rocked
1) Exotic locales. I loved the shot where there is a huge statue of Vishnu in the middle of a river and Aishu is praying to give her strength...
2) Beautiful cameramanship
3) Aishu - old but still gold
4) Music was good

What sucked
1) There is a lot of buildup for the Raavanan character - but there is no back up in it
2) The completely goofed up attempt to link this to Ramayana
3) All the monkey noises, dandanaa dan nonsense and characters behaving like a gorilla half the time
4) Mani always has a wierd sense of the setting - which I personally hate. Some may like it. It is either a dark room with just a zero watt bulb (anjali, iruvar, mouna ragam) or it rains a lot throughout the movie (raavanan, nayagan) .
5) There were no gripping dialogues
6) There was not a single moment where I sat at the edge of my seat

Casting I liked
1) Aish
2) Prithviraj
3) Priyaaaaaaaaaaa

Casting I hated
1) Karthik
2) Prabhu - he gave the cameramen the real challenge of keeping him within the frame
3) Vaiyyapuri - why is he an Ali?

Anyways - dont waste your money. Watch it in Sun TV after 2 months