Kick Movie Review: An unfunny and trite Santhanam-starrer that is also vile and boring

The opening credits of Kick has a slideshow of really famous products with slight changes in the spelling of the brand. For instance, Frooti becomes Prooti, Liril becomes Eiril, Horlicks becomes Horlocks, and after a point, they run out of ideas, and just mirror-image alphabets to make Hamam look a bit different. While the spelling changes itself is a pretty juvenile attempt at comedy, this mirror-image trick shows a paucity of ideas, and in many ways, the opening credits is a microcosm of the entire film. Kick is overwhelmingly juvenile, downright boring, painfully trite, unnecessarily vile, consistently crass, and worst of all, terribly unfunny. 

Cast: Santhanam, Tanya Hope, Brahmanandam, Thambi Ramaiah, Kovai Sarala 

Director: Prashanth Raj

Thankfully, Kick does have a plot, and it revolves around two ad filmmakers — Santhosh (Santhanam) and Shivani (Tanya Hope) — who are said to be competitors but have never seen each other. While Santhosh gets contracts by hook and crook, Shivani wants her work to speak for itself. When Santhosh taps into Marketing Head Casio’s (a woefully miscast Senthil) weakness for women and wins a particular contract by hoodwinking an aspiring model to dance a seductive number, Shivani loses her cool. She files a case against Santhosh at the ‘Ad Council,’ which is just an excuse to include one more crass and vulgar scene with a double entendre that is less an entendre and more a direct statement. Now, to get out of this conundrum, Santhosh gets into a bizarre series of events that finds him reaching Bangkok to make scientist Vaali (Brahmmanandam) concoct an all-powerful powder that can cure all diseases. You think this is unnecessarily convoluted? Wait till you meet Vaali’s brother Sugriva, who conducts a midget wrestling ring in Thailand, and even worse, what passes off as romance in this disappointing Santhanam. How is this love? What is this love? Why is this love? Where is the love? 

While Santhosh, of course, falls in love with Shivani the first time he sees her, she absolutely hates the idea of the existence of such a person. So, he fakes his identity, woos her in Bangkok, makes a fool out of her in Chennai, steals her ideas, insults her intelligence, and yet, she believes Santhosh is not Santhosh but Magizhvan… a name that she herself gives a random person. Even if we sidestep the outlandish concept that two top ad filmmakers in the city have no idea about each other’s existence or how they look, the makers confuse the sheer idiocy of Shivani as her being ‘naive and innocent.’ No, Shivani, you really deserve better… even if you are portrayed as seemingly incapable of thinking a single coherent thought. 

If the romance is forgettable at best, the grating comedy is actually a bunch of criminal offences masquerading as humour. Thambi Ramaiah’s MJ flippantly uses rape jokes, and while physically writhing in my seat at the audacity of those lines, the last act of the film decides to trample the concept of consent in its attempt to wring a laugh or two. Firstly, the writing in these portions is banal, and it is not funny at all. If the only good joke in an over 120-minute comedy film is a scene involving a time capsule-looking-porta potty, then it points to the writing going down the drain. Take, for instance, the scene where Shivani’s boss (Manobala) tells her that Magizhvan is not Dr Vaali’s son, but is actually Santhosh. He says, “I am sending you pictures of your Magizhvan, Dr Vaali, and Santhosh and you figure out the truth.” But she has already seen Dr Vaali in person, and believes in the existence of Magizhvan. So why would she look at those three photos and think she has been cheated? Why would that realisation dawn on her? Why does she tear up with a pathos background score to boot? Just why? Why is Shivani… Shivani? And why does Santhosh think he is God’s gift to women? No, Santhosh, when you say, “Ponnungalukku demand panna theriyum, decision edukka theriyaadhu” it isn’t as cool as you think it is. You are pathetic. But of course, things will fall into place for you because you are a Tamil cinema hero. 

Lesser said about the dialogues the better because the makers think adult comedy is all about flopping around and saying crass things, or spouting inanities in the name of maintaining a random rhyme scheme. Even if I can move past people rhyming labour with daabar or Water Melon becoming Quarter melon, and objection turning into abortion, I draw a line when someone mishears H2SO4 as Echa soru. Nope. Just nope. The rhymes are pardonable when compared to the sudden changes in character arcs just to further the narrative and bring things to a close. Why does a perenially lusty and caricaturish MJ have a change of heart for exactly one scene that is long enough for him to advice Santhosh to mend his ways? In the very next scene, we see MJ channel his pervertedness like it is nobody’s business. Come on! 

The only redeeming factors in Kick are Sudhakar S Raj’s cinematography and the terrific soundtrack courtesy of Arjun Janya. The songs are a lovely audio-visual treat. However, what is the point if there are no laughs whatsoever? As the credits roll, and we see the cast and crew laughing their hearts out while filming Kick, one can’t help but think why didn’t these laughs translate onscreen, only to realise the actual joke was on us.