Brother Movie Review: Middling family drama with manufactured conflicts

It felt ironic when fifteen minutes into Brother, director Rajesh M narrates, "Karthik (Jayam Ravi) is unaware of how unpredictable his life is going to be once he moves to Ooty." Though predictability is not inherently a problem, it is expected of a story to make us think of at least two or three probabilities of how things could go. We figure out how things are going to pan out with precision and, unfortunately, are left playing a guessing game we know we will win in the end.

Brother begins by showing us how Karthik, a law school dropout, keeps embarrassing his parents by being a carefree individual who cannot tolerate irresponsible behaviour and thereby goes on to start a fight with anyone and everyone. As the tradition of Tamil cinema has it, every unruly brother can be fettered only by his dotting elder sister. Enter Anandhi (Bhumika Chawla), Karthik's sister, who promises her parents to make her brother a better person, and takes him to her house in Ooty. How Karthik brings chaos into the lives of Anandhi's husband, Aravind (Natty) and her in-laws, Sivagurunathan (Rao Ramesh) and Hemamalini (Saranya Ponvannan), forms the rest of the story.

A protagonist who makes light of serious situations is director Rajesh M's forte. However, since he hasn't been updating his humour to suit the changing sensibilities of the audiences, he was unable to replicate the success of Siva Manasula Sakthi, Boss Engira Baskaran and Oru Kal Oru Kannadi in the films that followed. Brother could have been a better film if Rajesh had stuck to the exploration of emotions and bonding instead of reverting to the no-longer-funny comedy routines.

Except for the brother-sister portions of Karthik and Anandhi, no characters (even both while interacting with others) feel like real people. What should have been soulful conversations turned out to be a recitation contest. In scenes involving Priyanka Mohan, it fails even to be that, as she punctuates in places where it is not necessary. Her characterisation seems like it never crossed the first draft of the script. This looks shockingly bad in an industry that is already guilty of writing undercooked female characters for years. Extensive thought should have gone into how Karthik and Archana (Priyanka) get acquainted with each other. Making her Karthik's sister-in-law is the easiest and laziest way to write romance in this day and age.

Cast: Jayam Ravi, Bhumika Chawla, Priyanka Mohan, Natty, Rao Ramesh, Saranya Ponvannan

Director: Rajesh M

Easy and casual writing predates even the promising Karthik-Anandhi bond. Anandhi's IFS husband Aravind and her in-laws are disciplinarians who can get pissed off for things as simple as a dinner delayed by ten minutes. We wonder if they are really humans or walking clocks obsessed with time. Apart from punctuality, mixing English with Tamil is also believed to be a marker of sophistication in Tamil cinema. This trope too is employed in Brother beyond necessity.

Talented actors like Seetha, Achyuth Kumar and Saranya Ponvannan are wasted with underwritten roles. VTV Ganesh, like always, manages to land a few jokes with his peculiar voice or intonation—nothing more, nothing less. Where we would have loved to see more of Karthik and Anandhi, Rajesh goes back to his bad-boy bestie trope, preventing us from connecting with the story. Repulsion, not humour, stemmed out of these portions. Harris Jeyaraj, on his part, offers some respite with the catchy 'Makkamishi' and a poorly placed yet beautifully choreographed 'Medhakudhu Kaalu Rendum.'

There is an emotional high point in the second half that involves Karthik, which, if it had been written better, could have greatly improved the film. Karthik wants to right the wrongs for his sister's sake after discovering something about himself. However, the problem in Anandhi's life is borne out of a trivial argument. Is the solution so elusive to be sought with angst? This could be achieved without breaking a sweat. So, we don't get sufficiently bothered for Anandhi's wellbeing, nor do we anxiously pray Karthik succeeds. If firing a house help could cause argument and separation in the family and a simple and drab school skit can change a person's heart, relationship fallouts don't evoke sympathy, and reunions don't make us profusely happy.

It seems that director Rajesh M has come to a revelation in Brother on how to deal with relationships in a serious manner in his films. Instead of creating something subliminal out of it, he again resorts to the old ways that once let a chuckle or two escape from us. This mishmash of genres has effectively diluted the film's core, rendering it inconsequential.