Settai

To all those who were informed that Settai is not a frame-to-frame copy of Delhi Belly, I’m sorry to break your bubble, but from what I saw on screen, it looks nothing less than a neat copy sans cusswords or adult one-liners. I had least expectations from the film but surprisingly it was not bad. But, it could have been better and equally entertaining.

The plot is pretty much the same. It takes us through the lives of three friends, employed in a Tamil paper in Mumbai. A series of unfortunate events trigger off a cat and mouse game involving the search for missing diamonds worth millions.

What would have happened to Settai without Santhanam? This is a recurring question associated with several recent films featuring Santhanam. Even though he irritates me to the gut, I’m surprised by the way he has been used by Tamil film industry despite the fact he is getting repetitive and extremely boring.

Settai is not as genuinely good as Delhi Belly, but has very fewer moments to look forward to. These moments could have been developed into a promising plot, but we don’t see that happening. The onscreen friendship between the trio – Arya, Santhanam and Premgi, is passé and misses a soul. The film misses the charm of the original and it tends to throw the spot light on Santhanam for most part by giving him all the ‘so called’ best lines. Even though he rises up to the occasion and entertains with his one man show, one tends to get the feeling that the other actors turned out to be ineffective.

Even without profanity, Settai exploits the audience with cheap humour, which surprisingly helps the film encompass larger chunk of the audience. I don’t have to explain how that is possible. It’s self-explanatory.

Performances were not up the mark. As I mentioned earlier, this film would have definitely bombed without Santhanam. While Arya at least makes the effort to express in few scenes, Premgi was annoying with his oddly-looking big mouth acts. Hansika balances between glamour and performance, while Anjali doesn’t disappoint.

From the little I have seen and heard about Delhi Belly, I understand that the general reception had been divisive. Remaking such a film may not have been the brightest of idea, especially when you planning to omit the part that actually made it good in the first place. R. Kannan's previous attempt at remaking a popular Hindi film hardly went well. Say what you will about Jab We Met, but you cannot deny the fact that Kanden Kadhalai was devoid of any charm the former film had. When you remake a film and don't create a better product, you have failed as a director. But ending up with something that is, inarguably, very inferior to the original, you have failed miserably. So, yes. Settai is a very mediocre outcome from a clearly promising material. Am I surprised? No.

Excuse the pun, but Settai is not just a watered-down version of Delhi Belly, it is a version that never really understood why the original film worked. Besides the effortless and judicious use of cuss words, the original was very open when it came to discussing sex. Settai only offers us a few lazy winks and witless double entendres, coming across as cheap and gutless. If you want to make an adult joke, for chrissake, go ahead and do it. Cut the conservative crap; Tamil audience has had enough of all this babying nonsense. Are you really expecting us to laugh at words rhyming with Sottai, Maadu and Thanni while leaving the rest to our imagination? I mean, come on! We're in 2013. 

Under the pretext of "making it suitable for Tamil audience", Settai lost all of Delhi Belly's crackling humor and gained a whole lot of needless songs, which pop up at the wrongest of places. Settai lacks the thrill that makes Crime Caper films work. Thanks to the bevy of duets, the pace is badly hit. The central story keeps you mildly invested, as you sit there waiting, hoping the at least next one-liner from Santhanam would be funny. Excuse me for my poor choice of words, but when done tastefully, toilet humor can be very amusing. Here, after a point, the entire "upset stomach" subplot becomes repetitive. It does nothing to change or even tangentially affect the course of the actual story. 

Firstly, setting the film in Mumbai makes not a speck of sense. There could be many reasons for making such a big creative decision; the main reason being the story appearing too alien for the milieu. A film like Thuppaki wouldn't have worked had it been set in Chennai because of the scale it demanded. But in a pair of capable hands, Settai could have been wonderfully adapted to Tamil. The real reason why Settai takes place in Mumbai is because the a section of the creative team behind this film is so inept that they couldn't even be bothered to re-imagine the film. Almost all the locations are exactly the same. The film certainly looks visually appealing but anyone could have directed it.

The narrative sequence towards the end is a total mess and the film comes to a jarring halt. It is clear to me that a good story is hidden inside Settai; it's just that the treatment does no justice to it. The actors don't do much to elevate the film. Santhanam's performance is indifferentiable from his previous works. Premji was surprisingly restrained- thank God for that. The others look just pretty as required. Anjali was really convincing though. She's the only person who looks and acts according to the demands of her roles.

RATING: 2½ on 5. 

The first few scenes of Santhanam were hilarious and beyond that, there is nothing else. Settai is a scene by scene remake of Delhi Belly. I don’t understand, when directors say that they have adapted the movie to Tamil/local sensibilities, for he has only introduced a few meaningless songs at inappropriate places. Local sensibilities to me looks more like senseless introductions. The reason why Delhi Belly worked was because of the adult lines and the irreverence with which most things are done by the characters in the movie. There was also this song D K Bose, which created a lot of controversy before the release of Delhi Belly, which helped the movie’s publicity. Here, the director has toned down all the adult one-liners, though he has retained the scatalogical parts with Santhanam gassing around throughout the movie. After a point in time, you stop reacting to it even, leave alone laughing at it. The darkness in comedy is missing and there is no oomph factor in both the heroines. All the three main characters (Imran Khan, Kunal Roy Kapoor and Vir Das) in Hindi were great. Here, Santhanam carried the movie a fair distance, while Arya is passable, premji seems very avoidable. Except perhaps Venkat Prabhu, I don’t think anyone can give a hit with Premji as one of the lead characters. He has been acting the same way in all of his films and casting him probably is a sure shot way to lose at the box office. Nasser was at his competent best. Anjali and Hansika – both of them look too plump for their roles and especially Anjali just didn’t suit the role at all. Maybe, a better choice of cast would have helped the movie. The story revolves around three friends (Arya, Santhanam and Premji) and all of them work for the same newspaper. They get mixed up in the smuggling of diamonds by the gangsters and they get chased around throughout the second half, starting a little earlier before the interval. Then everything un-knots itself and ends well. The final credits of the movie were also good. I wasn’t sure what Neetu Chandra was doing in the movie. Mano bala, as is the norm plays yet another meaningless role. Arya just doesn’t suit the role of the protagonist in this movie. Music is passable and crowds in the theatre did not even react to the comedy in the second half. Rating: 2/5 Bottomline: You can happily give this a miss