Weekend movies - Very Bad Things and Hyderabad Blues 2

Very bad things - Decided to watch this movie after reading here that this is the movie on which Panchathanthiram was loosely based on. As the movie progresses, though it is very obvious that Kamal has been inspired from this movie, the similarities between the 2 movies are just too little. The part where 5 friends go to Bangalore and hire a call girl during their stay is definitely inspired from here. Instead of Bangalore, it is Las Vegas in this one. But instead of a fake murder in Panchathanthiram, here they really kill the girl. The scenes after the alleged murder where everyone panics and how Kamal as the only calm head in the group takes charge of the situation definitely seems to have been inspired. In fact, the way how Yugi Sethu freaks out is eerily similar to one character in this movie too.

But overall, the extent to which Kamal has been inspired from this movie is definitely not as much as we have seen in other instances before, for example between Life of David Gale and Virumandi. This movie deals with how the 5 friends in their attempts to hide their murder of the stripper, end up attacking & killing each other in their own group. I was completely unprepared for the crudeness in the movie as I was expecting it to be another comedy movie, just like Panchathanthiram. In fact, the craziness of the this movie freaked me out. I really don’t have much to write about it since the main reason of watching this movie was to observe the similarities of this movie with Panchathanthiram. Next up in the list is Tie Me Up, Tie me Down which is the movie Guna is supposed to be inspired from (or atleast that is how it looks like from the plot summary of that movie).

Hyderabad Blues 2 - Was good. I will have to say the proverbial comment that the sequel was not as good as the original. The one person I badly (& sadly) missed from the original - Rajshri Nair, the heroine of the original. She was so cute and was a perfect choice in the first one. But here, the choice of the heroine was a huge letdown. Somehow, I just could not take it that Kukkunoor undergoes whatever he does for HER sake :) But Kukkunoor's choice of the girl at work who seduces him was spot on. Of course, the movie has his trademark witty comments, like when he says on seeing a group of people dancing casually Indians have to be the worst dancers in the world. Though watching the first part is not a pre-requisite, we will enjoy certain scenes only if we have seen the first one. The one memory I am sure one would carry from the first part is the childish & amateurish climax. That part was handled way better in this movie, his 4 movies directing experience has probably taught him something. The only scene which was irritating was the rock band scene where I thought he just stretched it too much, with myself wishing the scene gets over a good 3 minutes before the scene actually ended. Definitely enjoyable movie from a director whose stock is steadily rising.