Chennai 28 II movie review: Load of fun and entertainment, Venkat Prabhu style
Director: Venkat Prabhu
Cast: Jai, Shiva, Vaibhav, Premgi, Vasanth Vijay, Sana
Chennai 28, the cult classic directed by Venkat Prabhu a decade ago, is a sports film about the city locality boys and their friendship, rivalry and love at the backdrop of cricket. In his second innings, the boys are grownup and some of them are family men with nagging wives and heavy domestic responsibilities with cricket taking a backseat. And from the city milieu, Prabhu has shifted the location to Theni, the suburban of Madurai.
Raghu (Jai) is an IT professional and his wedding with his girlfriend Anuradha (Sana Altaf) is to take place in Theni. Now, the Chennai Shaarks team - which includes Karthik (Shiva), Gopi (Vijay Vasanth), Pazhani (Nitin Sathya), Ezhumalai (Ajai) and Seenu (Premgi) (who is still a bachelor) - gets an opportunity to come together accompanied by their wives to attend Raghu’s marriage.
When they are reminiscing their good old times, now enters Arvind (Arvind Akash) from Shaarks team who eloped long ago with a girl and now ditched by her and lives in Theni. As usual they gallivant boozing when Akash talks about the wicked Marudhupandi (Vaibhav Reddy) and his cricket team being the champions of the local cricket tournament for years. Akash somehow rekindles their old memories about cricket and brainwashes them to play a match against Marudhu and much to their surprise (despite losing touch with the game), they even manage to win it.
To celebrate their victory, the boys indulge in a party with an item-girl (Manisha Yadav) , which land them in trouble. The next day Raghu wakes up with the item-girl sleeping next to him. Marudhu takes a picture of both and sends it to Anu’s family, which eventually stops their marriage. The rest is all about how they try hard to reunite the couple in marital bliss and also win the bigger match with Marudhu.
The major thing that works for this sequel is that all the boys (read actors) in the film as well as director Venkat Prabhu share a great camaraderie in real life too which has been nicely translated on to the screen. And that’s the precise reason Prabhu could extract the best from all the actors. Jai, Shiva and Premgi do their part well; the last two brings the roof down with their distinctive style of comedy.
It’s Vaibhav Reddy who stands out with his performance. Be it his body language or dialogue delivery, he shines every bit. Even Santhana Bharathy who appears in two scenes as an alcoholic appeals. Ilavarasu as usual delivers. Technically, Yuvan’s score with a blend of music from first part and the new one is good. But too many songs mar the pace.
Also, excessive drinking scenes (as though there’s no life without consuming alcohol every alternate day) are unwarranted.
All said and done, the movie has loads of fun and entertainment in Venkat Prabu’s signature style and is worth a watch.
