Lucky man – tamil movie review

Lucky man (Tamil) is a Yogi Babu starrer that is quietly making waves on Amazon prime. I am not sure if its release was a theatrical success. But it has quickly climbed up to number 3 in all India view. The movie is tailor made for OTT watch and goes on to confirm the belief that even those movies that may fail at BO have another option to resurrect via OTT. Possibly the more such movies succeed in OTT, content providers may be inclined to make movies more suited for OTT. The advantage of such alternate mechanism being bigger movies that are commercially more expensive to produce will have free reign in theaters. The makers of such monster movies anyway trample small time producers, squeezing out theaters for releasing small budget movies and edge out their screen space. And even if they do manage to get a decent release, for the huge amount of money spent by average viewer to watch a movie on theater makes them feel deprived of value for their spent if the movie is slow paced or content heavy. Nowadays, movie watching in theater has grown akin to amusement park visit along with family. They want to get entertained, clap whistle along with the rest of the mob, possibly dance like crazy when their dream merchants appear on screen and come out physically exhausted and with no mental recollection about anything that happened story wise. They are enthralled and satisfied by the couple of punch dialogues and slow mo sequences building up to their hero’s appearance along with some crazy viral songs.

This is where movies like Luckyman and its ilk loose out. The hero of this movie, YogiBabu is the flavor of the season comedian, who is mandatorily casted on every movie that is getting released in tamil. Such is his demand that I wonder if he hardly has any dialogue written for him. He rarely opens his mouth to speak or utter dialogues on screen and most of the time, it is his mind voice that speaks for the character. Meaning, major talkie portions for his character are churned out during dubbing. Despite being such a high in demand actor, even he can’t ensure mega openings that a medium range wannabe hero can manage. But his choice of movies where he plays the lead seems to be interesting and improving. I loved his movie “Mandela” which is an out and out director’s movie where anyone playing that character would’ve shone on screen. Yet just for the fact that he chose to play that role, Yogi babu deserves much credit. Similarly, Lucky man is a story that deserves an under dog who is unabashedly simple about himself and conscious of their self, right from the looks to all other “minuses” that the individual carry in society. Yogi Babu fits it to a T. Be it the physical appearance, the fact that he manages to retain his original hair style in every movie is evidence of how much his appearance plays a role in his career, his self-deprecating jokes about himself, everything adds up to the otherwise normal character which is borderline pessimist. 

Right from the first scene, where the younger version of the character comes out as an unlucky person till the opening sequence where despite answering all questions correct on a quiz show how he loses out on a prize, it gets quickly established as that luck is not his favorite pal. A Nissan car happens to appear in his life in the form a surprise gift and for a short while, everything seems to click well for him. Having spent all his life, tagged as an unlucky person, the onset of good fortunes post the arrival of the car makes it an undeniable part of his life. He has a run in with a honest cop and his over attitude irks the honest cop. They have couple of minor arguments which irks the ego of the upright cop. Suddenly the car goes missing and interestingly the cop himself confirms he had stolen the car. What happens next and how two good people who have conflicts with each other due to their own circumstances and how it all resolves in the end is interestingly told. The family setup of yogi babu, his friend (whose kind are possibly available only on movies), his office setup, the honest cop and his travails are all casually introduced to us. The second half is bit dragging but overall a feel good film that is suitable for family audience. It does have its laugh moments but the comedy is not in your face and rather organically built in. It has been a while since such a positive movie came out with a character based on a simpleton or common man. Hope the success of Lucky man results in many such lucky breaks for upcoming directors who may not all have the blessings of regining superstars of tinseldom.