Oh my kadavulay

At times, the universe sends you responses and replies across unforeseen mediums. With this covid adding to already depressing scenarios, getting addicted to mobile phone has only added to insomnia. My sleeping cycle entirely went for a toss and I was having trouble sleeping before 4AM. It further added to the mood and was thoughts were going on a downward spiral. Was getting irritated with everything and one night, unable to sleep, was wondering about how things would’ve been different for a “had it been” scenario. I never realized when I slept and next day stumbled on this tamil movie, “Oh my kadavulay”. Curiously, my friend had given me this movie long time back, recommending it as a decent watch and I had misplaced it. While browsing through some OTT landed on this one. To my surprise, the story was very similar to what I was thinking the previous night. The hero gets into a situation and wonders out loud to God himself, who gives him a ticket to try the road not taken. Evidently he decides to go back to the original scenario as everything leads to the same conclusion, only this time, he gets to see the other person perspective as well. The story had so many layers and each character being beautifully shaped, it is only a matter of time, before this gets made into all other languages.

It beings at a pub, where in 2 guys and a gal, all 3 of whom are childhood friends, meet up to celebrate the 2 year delayed pass out of their friends graduation. The gal proposes to the guy and after a bit of hesitation he accepts. Next day, the gal’s father meets up with the guy’s parents and fixes up the marriage. He even offers the guy, who is jobless, a job in his own company and as a wedding present, an apartment for the newly weds to being their life. When everything falls in lap without a struggle, obviously people doesn’t feel the importance. Ditto goes for the hero, who is also not interested on the job at his FIL’s company. He meets his school senior, secret crush, who works as assistant director to a famous movie director. His silent dream of taking up acting as profession gets rekindled and much to the annoyance of his wife, he goes for an audition. They get into a quarrel which leads them to divorce. As easy as they got married, the separation process gets even more quick. Right at the time of verdict, god intervenes and pulls up the hero. He gives him a second chance where his life reboots from the moment the gal proposes to him. He rejects the proposal this time and goes after his school crush. In the course of making a birthday wish video for her, secretly including his love proposal, he gets to know about the break up story of his crush and also gets to see how supportive his parents, in law and wife from other timeline are when he opens out about his desire to act. He gets to see their version of why they did things the way they did, for he could remember the scenario from previous version, unlike others. He ends up falling in love with the girl who proposed to him and on the day of her marriage, like all other movies, the gal runs away, leaving the bakra guy at the altar. They all reunite back at the pub, where the hero, by mistake blurts out the truth about second chance. God would’ve forbidden him not to reveal about this to anyone and what happens after he breaks the vow forms the ending. An amazingly feel good and philosophical movie, told without a hint of melodrama and as youthful and peppy as possible. Songs are already chartbusters and the way every single scene and dialogue from first half ties back to itself in second half, shows the amount of effort that has gone into screenplay. It was an amazing tight rope walk, avoiding the trap of repeat scenes fatigue yet at the same time, driving home the point. 

As I was watching it, I could feel the whole thing unravelling for me, as if it was a message for me through the movie, not to over complicate things. The same movie got played thrice, once each for my wife sis and mom on the same day and it really became an overkill. All of them loved the movie was an understatement. Somehow my mom has this knack for picking blockbusters the moment she watches a couple of scenes. Be it “Raja rani”, “Pichaikaran”, “Ghilli”, “Saami” she has been spot on with her assessment across different genre’s. Probably kollywood can arrange a premier show for her to know the result as a safer option. My only peeve was that the hero role could’ve been played by a different person. He is cut out for rigid and serious roles, definitely not for something that requires some amount of comic timing. A decent attempt nevertheless. A must watch movie, obviously :)