Unarvugal Thodarkadhai Movie Review: A generic watch without emotional depth that’s content with being surface-level

Unarvugal Thodarkadhai Movie Review: It’s high time that our filmmakers stop using generalised statements in their movies about men and women as a collective unit. A lot of our films make random statements like, ‘Women are very forgiving’ or ‘Men have a big heart’ like they are talking about a single individual. Someone should tell them that they are talking about an entire gender here and creating dialogues with random generalisations in order to win over the audience is just lazy writing. There are a lot of such dialogues in Unarvugal Thodarkathai. One dialogue goes something like, ‘It’s said that men are the ones who don’t understand women but it’s actually women who do not understand men.”

Unarvugal Thodarkathai follows the life of a newlywed couple who have had an arranged marriage. Karthik (Hrishikesh) and Priya (Sherlin Seth) are our leads. They both have jobs and are financially stable. If you want a film to talk about the intricacies of marriage and marital discord, then there are much better films that have been made in a similar space. But the fact that Unarvugal Thodarkathai doesn’t get into heavy-duty stuff and always stays at a surface level makes the film trivial and innocent at once.

The fights that Karthik and Priya have aren’t life-altering and are presented without any nuance or emotional depth. It might even come across as trivial. Unarvugal Thodarkathai is a low-stakes affair and the film deserves praise for being content with that. Even the brightly lit frames are in sync with the rosy setting of the film. Basically, this film can be compared to a person who is living on a far-off island without the slightest clue about what’s happening in the world. Priya cooks for her husband and apologises to him because she made the breakfast with whatever items were in the house. She also prioritises her husband over her profession and everything else in her life.

There are a plethora of irksome characters in the film, including the English-speaking Subramani, the senseless boss and the oblivious wife of the must-have best friend character. Also, all the characters in the film only share half the information with others. Therefore, it obviously results in a series of misunderstandings between our leads. This is a major issue with the film. Priya and Karthik’s initial reason for not talking to each other still makes sense. But, later on, the supporting actors’ conversations with Priya only make things worse for her and Karthik. How are all the characters in the film so bad at communication that they cannot even convey a basic thing? It’s just too much convenient writing to keep the story going.

There are interesting moments in the film that are intriguing but are never delved into. There’s a scene where Priya hesitates to talk about her and Karthik’s sex life with their friends. In another scene, Karthik tells his friends that he is not worthy of being loved by someone like Priya. But these are never explored further. It’s as if the makers were dead sure that they wanted to make a film that remained surface-level and didn’t go even a little deeper.