

It’s a madly inventive bit, and it made me imagine what it would be like if characters from a particular film kept drifting into other films, like ghosts. You have to watch the scene that references Engeyum Eppodhum. Massu could have been a visionary “mass” movie. Very few seek to lift that idea off the page, shape it with a great technical team and create a work of vision. Why are Tamil directors so content with concept-level filmmaking? It’s as if the mere idea were enough. Storyline: Things get spooky when a man gets involved with ghosts Who cares if he actually plays that shot? He’s like a batsman who knows exactly what kind of shot he should be playing, but remains happy with that knowledge.

But that’s the thing with Venkat Prabhu’s films these days. It needs to be shepherded from the inside of his head to the screen. I loved the twist involving Jet (Premgi Amaren). (Ghost, The Sixth Sense, even Pisaasu - they all take turns possessing this screenplay.) And Venkat Prabhu keeps coming up with googlies. The idea behind the supernaturally themed Massu is terrific, even it feels like a mashup of many spirit-driven films. These days, though, I ask myself: “How did he make Chennai 600028 in the first place?”īut I have to give Venkat Prabhu this much: he is a great ‘ideas man’. But then we got Saroja and Goa, not bad films as such, but so loose and scattershot that you wondered why someone who made Chennai 600028 would bother with this kind of B-level material.

It was formally structured and scripted, and so moving and funny that it appeared a new voice had emerged. The only sixer in Venkat Prabhu’s career is his first film, the superb Chennai 600028. But if it’s a clearing-the-boundary cry, then sorry, there are a hundred fielders out there, palms cupped, looking at the sky. Massu Engira Masilamani comes with the tagline ‘A Venkat Prabhu Sixer.’ If this is a reference to Massu being the director’s sixth film, then fine.
