My expectations for Santhanam movies are always the lowest it could ever be. Last year alone I watched three of his movies in theaters and ended up hating them all. In fact, "Kick" is still by a large margin the worst movie of 2023 in my opinion. So the fact that "Vadakkupatti Ramasamy" wasn't really horrible came as somewhat of a surprise.
Here is the movie's biggest win - it had a rather grounded and coherent plot; something that's always missing in Santhanam's movies. The comedy was definitely hit-or-miss, but it wasn't unforgivably annoying; as again, has been the trend in all of his movies. "Vadakkupatti Ramasamy" tells the story of an atheist from an extremely superstitious village and how he decides to profit off the gullibility of the villagers by constructing a temple and monetizing everything around it. The plot and ensuring conflicts are decent enough and doesn't really try to be anything more than it is, and that works out extremely well in its favor.
Sometimes silly and sometimes satire, "Vadakkupatti Ramasamy" ends up being a Santhanam movie you could actually sit through without a fuss; which coming from me, is as high a praise for his movies as I could ever give these days.
Here is the movie's biggest win - it had a rather grounded and coherent plot; something that's always missing in Santhanam's movies. The comedy was definitely hit-or-miss, but it wasn't unforgivably annoying; as again, has been the trend in all of his movies. "Vadakkupatti Ramasamy" tells the story of an atheist from an extremely superstitious village and how he decides to profit off the gullibility of the villagers by constructing a temple and monetizing everything around it. The plot and ensuring conflicts are decent enough and doesn't really try to be anything more than it is, and that works out extremely well in its favor.
Sometimes silly and sometimes satire, "Vadakkupatti Ramasamy" ends up being a Santhanam movie you could actually sit through without a fuss; which coming from me, is as high a praise for his movies as I could ever give these days.