Old Fatties with Hotties...

I think it is so symptomatic of Tamil cinema that you have actors like Vijaykanth, Kamal Hasan and Rajnikanth, all of whom started acting a reaaaaaaalllllly loooooooooong time ago( I hope that those extra letters made my point), and they still get their hands on some pretty lass. It projects the wrong image that boys need to follow. It is unfortunate that once you become a star in Indian cinema, you are a star, a hero for life. It happens in every industry, but I still think that the southern industries are more prone to "handing" out "hero" roles to these geriatrics.

Unfortunately, I happened to watch some Vijaykanth(Captain Vijaykanth- expected moniker that- he played a cop most of the time, in his earlier movies) movie on a Singapore tamil channel called "Vasantham". Captain( as I shall call him from now on) was a police officer and he wishes to rid the police force of corruption and bring law and order to the land- that most noble of causes! Somehow in between, a reporter and a female cop get mixed up in the story (the female reporter is the totally hot Ramyakrishnan) and fall in love with our short and portly Captain (How, even I don't know). To cut a long story short, the Captain manages to rally the police officers, using loooooong, cliched sentences and expressions, brings about a change of heart in all the "cop mamas" and then he ends up catching the evil guy, produces him in court like a good old coppie, and marries one of the girls (the totally hot Ramyakrishnan, of course- heart break for the police officer chick).

So yeah- what really got me going was our Captain dancing around with all these heroines. He can't even bend and touch his knees for goodness sakes. Get over it, Captain! You are an old fatty who can't even turn his hips five degrees in either direction- you don't deserve hot ladies now! This projects a very wrong image to the young guys watching out there- because they will think that being awesomely fat makes them look attractive and cool, Captain style- and they will start munching on loads of Happy Meals and get clogged arteries and die before they have a chance of attracting a woman. More over, everyone who has seen the Captain's election rallies knows that he has an almighty pot in place of his stomach- he uses a humungous black belt to tuck his tummy in, as you can see the outline of the belt under the shirt sometimes- but that sort of projects his upper chest outwards and the effect is not very "nice". And they expect a man, who closely resembles a pregnant rhinoceros to jump ten foot in the air and kick the living daylights out of all the baddies!!?? You can also see his shirt making a triangular point in all the fight scenes- that's where the wires holding him up are! If you are really careful, you can sometimes also see the wires! Okay, I know that some of the paying public is foolish, but isn't this going a bit too far? Stick to politics, Captain- I like you better as a politician!

It's not only him- we have the balding Rajni dancing around with Shreya, in "Shivaji"( was she even alive, when he started his acting? I doubt it seriously!) and with Nayanthara(Her real name is Diana-a mallu- it seems) in "Chandhramukhi". But the make up artists in "Shivaji" were really good and they made him look like a forty year old with a bad hair loss problem, so that wasn't too bad. Kamal is a really good actor, but he is not quite the prince charming he once was- he's got bags under his eyes and he is looking really old at the moment. I really hope that these guys act their age; though I seriously doubt Rajni can, even if he wants to- his image as the "ultimate" superstar will really do him no favours and he probably may need even better make up artists for later movies.

Till then I reckon I will get another dose of the old fatty movies (old ones too, like MGR and Shivaji Ganeshan) on the tele [:D] ..