War of the Worlds Extinction 2024 - Movies (Mar 28th)
Sex-Positive 2024 - Movies (Mar 28th)
The Farmers Daughter 2025 - Movies (Mar 28th)
Dangerous Lies Unmasking Belle Gibson 2025 - Movies (Mar 28th)
Flight Risk 2025 - Movies (Mar 28th)
Alexander and the Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Road Trip 2025 - Movies (Mar 28th)
The Life List 2025 - Movies (Mar 28th)
Renner 2025 - Movies (Mar 28th)
The Rule of Jenny Pen 2024 - Movies (Mar 28th)
Bring Them Down 2024 - Movies (Mar 27th)
Love Hurts 2025 - Movies (Mar 27th)
Holland 2025 - Movies (Mar 27th)
The House Was Not Hungry Then 2025 - Movies (Mar 27th)
One Million Babes BC 2024 - Movies (Mar 27th)
Through the Door 2024 - Movies (Mar 27th)
Snow White 2025 - Movies (Mar 27th)
England’s Lions The New Generation 2025 - Movies (Mar 26th)
The Last Keeper 2024 - Movies (Mar 26th)
The Brutalist 2024 - Movies (Mar 25th)
Mufasa The Lion King 2024 - Movies (Mar 25th)
The Monkey 2025 - Movies (Mar 25th)
The One Show - (Mar 29th)
On Patrol- Live - (Mar 29th)
The Last Word with Lawrence ODonnell - (Mar 29th)
The Rachel Maddow Show - (Mar 29th)
The Patrick Star Show - (Mar 29th)
Helsinki Crimes - (Mar 29th)
One Killer Question - (Mar 29th)
The Bold and the Beautiful - (Mar 29th)
Cops - (Mar 29th)
The Price Is Right - (Mar 29th)
The Young and the Restless - (Mar 29th)
Lets Make a Deal - (Mar 29th)
The Kelly Clarkson Show - (Mar 29th)
All In with Chris Hayes - (Mar 29th)
Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives - (Mar 29th)
Gold Rush - (Mar 29th)
Horrible Histories - (Mar 29th)
WWE SmackDown - (Mar 29th)
The Beat with Ari Melber - (Mar 28th)
Gogglebox - (Mar 28th)
While most filmmakers provide the message of their film in the end, Manikandan, in fact, begins Aandavan Kattalai with a card that says that the film is meant to create awareness. He gives us the message right before the beginning of his film: Trusting middlemen is like using others to scratch your nose. The story revolves around Gandhi (Vijay Sethupathi, pitching in with a smartly judged performance that brings out the innate decency of this character), a forthright young man, who comes to Chennai from Madurai with his friend Pandi (Yogi Babu, who is the star of the first half, and brings the house down with his one-liners), hoping to go to London and find some work and settle his loans. An agent (SS Stanley) 'advises' him to lie in his passport application that he is married, so that he stands a chance to get a visa. However, his visa application is rejected (Pandi, meanwhile, gets his!), and Gandhi starts working as an accountant in a theatre group. But when an opportunity to go to London with the group comes his way, Gandhi has to get his 'wife's' name removed from his passport, to stay in the good books of the group's head (Nasser). For that, he has to find a girl who has the same name as the one mentioned in the passport — Karmeghakuzhali. And as luck would have it, he finds one — a journalist (Ritika Singh, spirited) — but can he convince her to be part of this divorce process? Just like how Manikandan's Kaaka Muttai and Kutrame Thandanai refrained from finger-pointing and sermonising, Aandavan Kattalai, too, is far from being preachy, despite involving a subject that offer plenty of targets to take pot-shots at. Both as a writer and filmmaker, the director acts as an observer of characters and their actions, never blatantly judging them (even the scheming ones come across as people who are just making use of an opportunity), and letting the viewer imbibe the message. This technique works marvellously here, where almost every character feels like someone we could encounter in real life. The film is superbly cast, right down to the minor characters like Cheenu Mohan, who works in the passport office. And it is filled with humorous stretches, like when Gandhi and Pandi go house-hunting or the proceedings in a family court. There is also an underlying pathos in this tale, which beautifully comes to the fore once Gandhi's lies start unravelling. The film is somewhat leisurely paced, but that isn't much of an issue, as the scenes are engaging. The only underwhelming aspect here is that Manikandan doesn't show us Gandhi's admission of guilt with the theatre group's head, more so because his string of lies begins because he value's the man's trust.