Film: "Inji Iduppazhagi"
Language: Tamil
Director: Prakash Kovelamudi
Cast: Anushka Shetty, Arya, Sonal Chauhan, Urvashi, Prakash Raj, Brahmanandam, Gollapudi Maruthi Rao and Bharath
Rating: **
Reviewed by: Haricharan Pudipeddi
In "Inji Iduppazhagi", Anushka Shetty plays Sweety, an overweight woman who finds solace in eating - from keema samosa to jalebi - anything and everything she can stuff herself with.
She almost eats through the entire first half; much to the worry of her mother whose only concern is to get her married off to an NRI. Her partner in crime is her diabetic grandfather, who likes to feed her everything he's not supposed to eat. At one point, you get the feeling that this old man could be really responsible for her weight.
With weight struggles as the core theme of the film, the makers could've handled this story in two ways - attempt a full-length spoof with no compromises, or address the issue as sensitively as possible.
The film, directed by Prakash Kovelamudi, achieves neither of these things and ends up making a mockery of even the little promise it displays sporadically, like the wonderful scene between the father and young Anushka at the very beginning.
While the first half is fairly engaging even with the cliches, the film almost turns into a fitness commercial post interval, especially towards the end, featuring cameo appearances by a bevy of stars such as Nagarjuna, Rana Daggubati, Jiiva, Simhaa, Kajal Aggarwal and Hansika Motwani among others. The things that get great mileage out of the film are the Clean India campaign, a weighing machine, jalebi and laddoo.
Despite all the pain she went through to gain weight, Anushka couldn't save this one from turning into a largely boring experience. And to add to the woes, the makers fooled the viewers into believing that it's a bilingual, which the film definitely isn't as it mostly appears like a dubbed Hindi serial on Tamil channel.
