What Is the Story About?
Two twin brothers, Anbu and Arivu, are separated from birth after their parents split up due to differing ideologies. The father, Prakasham, takes the younger twin, Arivu, and leaves the district he grows up in. Anbarivu focuses on the differing social ideologies and the twin brothers coming together to repair the damage that separated their family. Will they succeed?
Performances?
Before we analyze the performances, one thing should be noted – the actors are severely hampered by Anbarivu’s ridiculous screenplay. A good example of this is the minimal usage of Asha Sharath for the film. The talented actress is one of the lead roles of this film, but she doesn’t feature much onscreen. However, she does have a couple of good emotional scenes – which she nails. Sai Kumar and Napoleon do well with the limiting script, but the standout actor in Anbarivu is Vidharth who plays the primary antagonist Pashupathi. While the script has problems – Vidharth’s acting manages to humanize Pashupathi and while many won’t root for him – he is definitely someone we can empathize with (to some extent).
A special mention deserves to be given to the film’s lead, Hiphop Tamizha Adhi. While the script has its own issues, Adhi doesn’t help matters. The actor has to portray twins on screen – which he does manage to do; providing two very distinct personalities for each sibling. However, the actor is definitely miscast in this film. While he is barely believable as the disorderly older brother, Anbu, he is downright ridiculous as the younger twin, Arivu. Vidharth does his best to give us a film to watch, but with most of the film’s screen time taken by Adhi, the latter’s flaws are more prominent than the former’s decent work.
Analysis
This is the main story of Anbarivu – Two villages, Aandiyaapuram and Arsapuram, that are right next to each other, house enough people to fill a district, across both lands. The village of Arsapuram is where the people from the upper caste live while the village of Aandiyaapuram is where the people from the lower caste live. Both villages have been living in tentative peace for a long time. However, the children of the heads of both Aandiyaapuram and Arsapuram families, Prakasham and Lakshmi respectively, fall in love. Lakshmi’s father, Muniyandi, allows the marriage to happen only if Prakasham and his daughter live with Muniyandi for the rest of their days. Prakasham reluctantly agrees and eventually the couple have twin sons. But after continuing to face his father-in-law’s discrimination, Prakasham decides to leave with his family. Lakshmi, however, doesn’t want to leave her father’s side and takes Muniyandi’s side. After his wife ignores his ultimatum, Prakasham decides to leave – and takes his youngest son with him.
Twenty five years pass – the twins are all grown up. The older, Anbu grows up hating his father and brother, while the younger, Arivu grows up thinking that his mother is dead while not even knowing that he has a twin brother. However, Arivu eventually finds out the secret that his father has kept for a quarter of a decade (in a messed up manner), and he decides to meet with his estranged family. After kidnapping Anbu, Arivu takes Arivu’s place in the village – but he is quickly found out. Arivu decides to win the approval of his grandfather and teach Muniyandi the lesson, while also rooting out the main instigator of dual-village unrest. Eventually Arivu (and Anbu) succeed and the family becomes one again. And that’s the story.
The premise of the film has potential, but the screenwriters of Anbarivu manage to mess the whole film up. And their biggest error– the epicly cringe-worthy preachy dialogue. Since this movie is an old-school Tamil masala film – we expected the feature to be a dialogue packed action drama – but the film is primarily a preachy snoozefest. The entire film should take only an hour. But the sheer amount of preachiness takes over the film. Anbarivu preaches on various topics such as discrimination based on caste and village, never forget where you came from, always do the right thing and marry within the family. Out of these four, the last one seems to be an accident message that the film seems to be endorsing.
And like we mentioned earlier, the film’s lead, Hiphop Tamizha Adhi is not the right actor for this film. Adhi portrays Anbu, an ass-kicking racist rowdy who can take on ten men. He also portrays the pampered twin, Arivu, which he is under-prepared for. While there are a couple of funny sequences in the film featuring Arivu on-screen, Adhi has been wrongly miscast.
There are also the blatant plot holes in the film. Both villages fight after Prakasham leaves his wife. The villagers continue with their customs and follow the archaic upper caste-lower caste traditions. No one finds out about Pashupathi’s plans – especially when it is told out in the open. Pashupathi is decently written and acted out character, but the character’s plot exposition deliveries are plot holes in itself.
Overall, Anbarivu is a needlessly long feature film, which can be skipped if mildly busy. The film treats its audience as an ignorant upper class person who is socially inept. The only redeeming quality of this film is its villain, Pashupati, portrayed by Vidharth.
Other Artists?
Kashmira Pardeshi and Shivani Rajashekar play the love interests for the twins. Kashmira Pardeshi plays Kayal, an educated doctor who falls in love with her cousin after knowing him for only one week. Shivani Rajashekar plays Yazhini, a sophisticated young woman of Tamil origin who lives in Canada. She falls in love with her best friend’s twin brother, Anbu, almost immediately after meeting him – an uneducated rowdy who is also a hypocritical racist. Dheena plays Anbu’s best friend, who is also called Dheena. Clearly, the screenwriter has a lot of work to do. All three actors don’t have much to do on screen, other than turn up when the script requires them to.
Music and Other Departments?
The screenplay, as mentioned multiple times already, is atrocious. While the cinematography, editing and direction tries to salvage something, Anbarivu is notoriously unwatchable. Most of the songs are decent, but none of them are worth mentioning. The film’s location scouts deserve a mention for some brilliant onscreen location shots.
Highlights?
Couple Of Unexpected Comedy Scenes
Building Up The Primary Antagonist
Drawbacks?
Cringe-worthy Preaching
Lead Actor
Blatant Plot holes
Convenient Personalities
Unnecessarily Long
Did I Enjoy It?
Sparingly. It wasn’t very good.
Will You Recommend It?
Not really.
Anbarivu Movie Review by Binged Bureau