Making of remakes

Ok, some pause to life and its ramblings, to philosophical thoughts :P, to all that goes working in a devil's workshop (read idle mind)... Had promised myself to write a lighter post soon and here I go...

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Am no film critic, but a film lover in the sense i appreciate movies that make sense to me... from that point of view my take on two remake movies i recently saw...

For the record - I sincerely feel the original essence can never be captured in a remake or at least will not appeal if the same person watches both the versions... one ends up liking the version one has seen first rather than the better version... (the very same reason i liked Jay Jay over Serendipity, Manasellam and Idhayathai Thirudadhey over Love Story and loads on similar lines). Also one might just avoid seeing a second version ( I couldn't even try watching Saathiya and Hindi Ghajini after seeing likes of Maddy and Surya respectively and Bhool Bhulaiya after Shobana's mind blowing Manichitrathazhu or Jyothika's Chandramukhi)... The list is longer, with an amazing list of languages we follow and amazing list of movies on hand, we are bound to love some, like some, dislike some and more so hate some :)

Right now, my two cents on two recent Tamil flicks...

Ninaithale Inikkum - Now one might wonder if this even deserves a review or a comment... i just felt it might, coz this this is the genre that gets remade left right center from language to language across the country :P Theres a college building, 4 friends, more classmates, 2 gangs, a love story to blossom and break and get back at the end, a revenge, a student union, 5 songs, 2 fights, 10 senti dialogues, a prof/dad to lecture the kids into well being.... Simple, typical Indian cinema story line... but the way its conceived by the director comes out right only the first time. "Classmates" the original Mallu version, was sweet despite all the commonalities... was fresh, was at least well defined screenplay... enjoyed the movie not just coz prithviraj was there :P but coz it got the college theme across in full spirits. In the Tamil version, prolly the focus was more on remaking and ended up being a parade of scenes with not much of correlation. The essence was lost, and so was my interest. I seriously sat down wondering would the effect be the same on first time viewers, and it indeed was!!! So much for the effort taken to remake every single movie to every possible language....

Unnai Pol Oruvan - There was A Wednesday, there was a movie out there that has made an impact, there was a Nasrudeen Shah who was impeccable, there always was. Chennai would never know what it is to be a Mumbai to relate to A Wednesday, but Chennai did. Thanks to Unnai Pol Oruvan. Thanks to Kamal Hasan and Mohan Lal for making us forget it was yet another remake. There were things that were done even better than the original.. the detailing that had gone into every character, the dialogues, the political relevance, getting Chennai to relate to all this - it made me feel good about a remake that good movies should not be lying down for one set of audience alone, remakes are for the good only if it comes out not just as a remake :)

P.S.: I watched Unnai Pol Oruvan before Ninaithale Inikum, was all positive towards watching remakes, but that one made me go back to my earlier view point of "no to remakes" :P So much that am warning people not to watch Wanted - it was a hopeless journey from Telugu to Tamil Pokkiri already :P