Anandham Vilayadum Veedu HD RELEASED

 

Anandham Vilayadum Veedu is the latest group photograph cinema that Tamil cinema has come up with. Here, we have a large family of the half-brothers Kasiappan (Saravanan) and Muthu Pandi (Cheran). Each one has three other brothers, with families of their own. All in all, we get told that there are 12 families with a total of 30 members making up this extended family.

And everyone seems to get along with one another, at least initially. It is when Muthu Pandi offers his land to Kasiappan that trouble begins... in the form of Karuppan, a scheming local big shot, who is jealous of his former employee Muthu Pandi's growth in business. And so, he plots to throw a stone at this hive by egging on Muthu Pandi's wayward brothers (Soundararaja and Nakkalite Chella). Does he manage to succeed?

At least for a while, Anandham Vilayadum Veedu makes us look at it as a fantasy with a family whose members seem to be so closely bonded together. And director Nandha Periyasamy succeeds in establishing the various characters and their equations with one another.

Even though the execution resembles that of a festival special episode of a TV serial, Saravanan and Cheran manage to make us buy into their bond. And when the director sets up the conflict, it feels interesting, at least for a while. We are in Pandavar Bhoomi meets Anandham territory. We get to see how beneath the smiles on the surface, there exist grudges and misgivings. But then, instead of building on the dramatic potential that the plot offers, the director decides to go for unconvincing scenarios and overblown melodrama. The actions of the two rebellious brothers, and the wives (including Muthu Pandi's), feel so vile that you begin to wonder why Kasiappan and Muthu Pandi would want to live with them under the same roof. They continue to show enmity towards Kasiappan and his family - even after they are clearly told that it is Karuppan who has cheated them.

And finally, when the director decides to resolve things and give a everything-is-rosy-again ending, it not feels contrived but also rings false. The romantic track involving Sakthi (Gautham Karthik) and Viji (Shivathmika Rajasekhar) only serves as a distraction from the main narrative. The film doesn't acknowledge the friction that a large family creates and how a loving famil