Hara Hara Mahadevaki

STORY: The bags belonging to a young man about to break up with his lover, two bumbling criminals planning a bomb blast, a man circulating counterfeit currency, and a couple paying ransom to save their daughter get mixed up leading to so much confusion.

REVIEW: Hara Hara Mahadevaki does stand true to its claim of being an adult comedy film, in the sense that the comedy here involves a few double entendres and sight gags. But take those away, and the film feels no different from the mindless comedies that we have been seeing of late. It even has what appears to be the foremost requisite of a Tamil comedy film these days — Rajendran singing in his sandpapery voice!

The premise — involving a dozen characters, and a half-a-dozen bags that look the same — does have the potential for a madcap comedy. Hari (Gautham Karthik) and Ramya (Nikki Galrani) are a couple breaking up decides to return the things they had gifted each other; a politician (Ravi Maria) plots a bomb blast to earn sympathy and hires two bumbling criminals (Rajendran and Karunakaran); a fraudster (Bala Saravanan) tries to earn some quick big bucks by circulating fake currency; a child goes missing in a resort and a cop (RK Suresh) tries to catch the kidnapper who has walked away with the ransom money. Everyone ends up in the resort and all hell breaks loose when their bags, which all look the same, get mixed up.

The best stretch in Hara Hara Mahadevaki, which is partly amusing and often frustrating (because it fails to exploit the situations to generate maximum laughs), is towards the end when confusion reigns supreme. It is in these scenes that the film shows us a glimpse of what it could have been — a riotous comedy — in the right hands.

Unfortunately, for the most part, director Santhosh is content to peddle silly stuff that one might be embarrassed to call as jokes. He seems to have decided that having a narration in the voice of the WhatsApp Swamiji is enough convince his target audience that they are watching a raunchfest. Even still, the film cannot think beyond generating laughs out of the tumescent male member; it even repeats this same idea thrice! The actors gamely try their best, but the weak writing never lets the film get into a rhythm where the jokes flow seamlessly. Thus, for every funny moment, we get three or four flat scenes.

Also, for an adult comedy, the jokes are quite juvenile — the sort that might make a teen giggle, but make no impact on an adult — and hardly envelope pushing. Added to this, the best (and ribald) jokes are already in the film’s trailer, so if you have seen the trailer, you can consider yourself as having seen the film.