What Is the Story About?
A wealthy restauranteer from Ooty on his deathbed reveals to his son Karthik about his son Sachin, who was born out of wedlock. A determined Karthi brings his step-brother back to Ooty to perform his father’s last rites. While navigating through different lifestyles and new people in Ooty, Sachin (who runs a street kadai famous for its chutney) finds it difficult to adjust to his father’s new family. Will he find peace and recieve love from his new family? Will he return to Chennai as a changed man? Will the family embrace him with open arms? With a pinch of on-the-face humour and old-school melodrama, Chutney Sambar narrates a tale of love, togetherness and acceptance.
Performances?
Yogi Babu is a scene stealer in Chutney Sambar. The actor has proved his mettle as a strong character artist in movies like Mandela. Rather than being relegated to hero’s friend roles and being reduced to body-shaming and colorist jokes, the talented actor gets a whole meaty arc to perform as Sachin – the illegitimate son of Rathnasamy. His emotional scenes, one-liners and comic gags – everything lands smooth.
Yogi Babu also shares a tender chemistry with Vani Bhojan, who plays the house-cook Sophie in the show. She also gets character with a nice scope to perform. Chandran who plays Karthik does a fine job and shares nice chemistry with Yogi Babu.
Analysis
Written by Radha Mohan and Pon Parthiban and directed by Radha Mohan, Chutney Sambar is a comedy drama that follows the traditional family drama template where majority of the duration goes into setting up characters and their fun banters, while the latter half would induce tears.
Chutney Sambar, like its name suggests is a relationship drama that reiterates values of relationships, family and the importance of feeling belonged. The show opens to Ooty’s famous restauranteer Rathnasamy who runs Amudha Cafe famous for its Sambar. An unexpected sickness follows him to deathbed where he makes shocking guilty revelations to his son Karthik about his life before marrying his mother.
Karthik sets out to Chennai to find his step-brother Sachin whom his father wanted to meet to perform his last rites. Sachin runs a street kadai famous for its chutney. As Sachin joins Karthik on his return to Ooty, he encounters life-altering and equally eventful happenings in his life. A sudden transition from the life of a street-vendor to a polished family’s member takes him and Karthik’s family equally aback.
Unaware about who Sachin is and his purpose in the family, Rathnasamy’s wife and children strike on a wrong foot with him. However, this paves way to a lot of gags that sometimes works, sometimes falls flat. Akin to Radha Mohan’s older works, the latter half of the show takes up an emotional heavy turn full of twists and turns, emotional drama and heavily dramatic outbursts.
The show is largely pulled through my Yogi Babu’s performance. At the expense of his appearance, poor background and skin-colour, the show churns a few uncomfortable gags that get dismissed quickly for the good. The actor is incredibly restrained in emotional scenes and makes you root and feel for Sachin, if the background music and writing didn’t do enough.
The director of some of Tamil cinema’s nicest feel good dramedies like Mozhi and Abhiyum Naanum tries to recreate the same charm in Chutney Sambar. But the attempt doesn’t fully hit the bull’s eye. The screenplay gets inconsistent as it tries to eject a track and reason for the behaviour of every single character no matter if they made sense or not. As a result, the show’s final episode feels rushed and rapid while predecessor episodes meander a lot.
However, Chutney Sambar maintains a feel good and breezy tonality throughout. In the era of overdone action and thriller shows, here’s a delightful show with a lot of food, a lot more of Ooty landscapes and a lovely Yogi Babu you could simply watch during your free-time. It’s not perfectly made, but its still watchable.
Music and Other Departments?
Ajesh’s music and background music for Chutney Sambar quite mostly sticks to the feel-goodness and old school drama template, but sometimes gets too overbearing and takes the attention out of the scene. Prasanna S Kumar’s camera work is soothing to the eyes and does justice to the beauty of Ooty and its cuisines.
Highlights?
Tonality
Yogi Babu
Supporting Cast
One-liners
Drawbacks?
Duration
Inconsistent Screenplay
Some outdated comic gags
Politics
Did I Enjoy It?
Yes, in parts
Will You Recommend It?
Yes, but with reservations.
Chutney Sambar Web Series Review by Binged Bureau
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