Nanban Oruvan Vantha Piragu Movie Review: As if Anand (Meesaya Murukku fame Anant Ram) has recorded daily vlogs of his life or has written a personal journal, noting intricate details, Nanban Oruvan Vantha Piragu captures every stage of his journey with the utmost patience (the viewer too is expected to stay patient to reap the joy of watching this film). He unpacks the events right from 1992, which marks the debut of two people: Anand’s birth and AR Rahman’s entry into Tamil cinema. So, like a twin, Rahman’s songs always tag along with him.

Peppered with the 90s magic of Colony Friends, games like Seven Stones and WWE trump cards, Superstar and Thala references, CSK vs MI street fights and more, the delightful template of Tamil cinema’s coming-of-age film is brightly apparent. There isn’t much innovation either. Instead, Anant trusts the story of this man and the nostalgia it evokes – seeing someone wrestle with life’s obstacles and finally accomplish is any day audience’s favorite. The only trick is to get the emotions right, and with a dedicated cast and sincerity in writing, Anant smartly makes us root for him. He also has a knack for humour and isn’t hesitant to use memes in a film to convey the character’s thoughts. Sample this: When a scared young man enters the premises of his engineering college and is taken aback by the half-built premises, stone-like food, and other disappointing events, it’s compared to a scene from Chandramukhi where they detect the presence of evil. As if on cue, you’re in splits, reminiscing all your college memories. This sequence also plays right after an emotional conversation he has with his father and the shift in mood is so seamless. With Elango Kumaravel passionately playing the role of Anand’s father and VJ Vijay breathing life into the role of a cherished best friend, we are just drawn to empathise and relate to this world that’s formulaic but sweetly familiar.

The viewing experience of the film feels like reading a personal journal within two hours – intriguing but tiring – because of the film’s pace and detailing. You understand the need to show each stage of Anand’s life and how the people around him shape it – every time he falls, someone helps him get up; when he financially faces troubles, his best friend is always ready to pitch in; his parents don’t have the power to get him a job but are willing to spend all their life’s earnings to ensure he gets the best education possible. However, even with so many people trusting and supporting him, Anand fights and flounders. For most of the second half, Anand is seen crying, unable to iron out all the kinks and probably, we all see a little of us in him. We’re also reminded of too many films, thanks to the countless stories in this genre and Anant’s determination not to try anything different. But because we see a semblance of ourselves, our friends, and our own lives on screen, we are ready to overlook the slow pace, the unnecessarily dragged-out sequences, the overfed montages of memories, and the film’s several other flaws.

Anand yearns to get back home, relish the simplest of joys, and be around his friends and family, and at the end of the day, that’s what we wish for too. So, having taken a trip down memory lane, we walk out of the theatre happy and hopeful, and like Venkat Prabhu (in a cameo) tells Anand, “Isn’t life all about these little moments?”

Written By: Harshini SV

Harold and the Purple Crayon, the new film, isn’t terribly impressive or imaginative as its title character. But it is a harmless story that will delight young children, and its the rare title that would make for a great first visit to the movies.

There are dozens of modern children’s films that are cheap, crass and annoying. Harold’s best quality is that despite its simplicity, the story and its presentation is wholesome and appropriately exciting for its target market.

Inspired by the now 70-year-old picture book series of the same name by Crockett Johnson, this (mostly) live interpretation of the book series a now adult Harold (Zachary Levi) jump out of the picture books and into the real world in a quest to find the author and meet the man who first drew him.

This doesn’t follow any specific plot from any of Johnson’s barely plotted books, but it is an interesting premise for a G-rated, 80-minute, big screen adventure. It also provides some morality and wisdom to justify a sufficient enough story to justify Harold’s leap into reality.

Cute and cuddly is the best way to describe Harold’s antics with his friends and new child he’s inspiring named Mel (a warm debut from Benjamin Bottani). The danger is never really dangerous, but the effects (and especially the crayon drawing!) are passable for a movie of this scale.

This film is the live action debut of former Blue Sky Animation director Carlos Saldanha, and his whimsy makes Harold a suitable project. He’s best known for the Rio franchise and 2017’s career high Ferdinand. A highlight here is the film’s hand-drawn animated prologue, where Saldanha’s animation experience gets to shine.

Much of the supporting cast delivers its weird, magic crayon premise with gusto, with sometimes surprisingly funny turns from Lil Rel Howery and Jermaine Clement. The scene stealer, however, is English theatre vet Tanya Reynolds as Porcupine, who’s fully committed, sweet, honest and hilarious across every scene she’s in.

Adults should be warned while Harold is warm, forgettable fun for those aged 4-10, the plot is shamelessly predictable and obvious. It’s still far more palatable than other recent family films, such as the recent Despicable Me 4.

I really enjoyed hearing the giggles and seeing the wide-eyed wonder of a Kindergarten aged audience member seated near me watching Harold and the Purple Crayon. That optimistic imagination is exactly the spirit to see the movie with, even if there’s nothing else on the page.

Harold and the Purple Crayon

5 out of 10

Rated G, 1hr 30mins. Family Fantasy Comedy.

Directed by Carlos Saldanha.

Starring Zachary Levi, Zooey Deschanel, Benjamin Bottani, Lil Rel Howery, Tanya Reynolds and Jermaine Clement.

Robert or Bobby — as he’s known to his friends — the protagonist of “Company,” Stephen Sondheim and George Furth’s 1970 musical, has always been an enigma. Why won’t this confirmed New York bachelor, who is celebrating his 35th birthday and not getting any younger, finally settle down with a wife? What is he so afraid of?

This question is the springboard for a groundbreaking concept musical. The show burrows into the character’s psyche while surveying the mixed blessing of marriage in a kaleidoscopic revue that boasts one of Sondheim’s most irresistible scores.

Scenes are linked thematically rather than in the linear narrative fashion of traditional book musicals. But for many fans of the show, the mystery of Bobby’s nature was never satisfyingly solved.

Marianne Elliott, the Tony-winning director of “War Horse,” “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” and the Broadway revival of “Angels in America,” wondered what would happen if you turned Bobby into Bobbie and cast the role with a woman. Her Tony-winning revival, which starred Katrina Lenk as Bobbie and the inimitable Patti LuPone as Joanna, whose rendition of “The Ladies Who Lunch” had Broadway raising a glass in her honor, discovered that the mystery might not be solved but a fresh new take could yield provocative insights.

LuPone isn’t in the North American tour production of “Company” playing at the Hollywood Pantages Theatre through Aug. 18. But Britney Coleman is radiant in the role of Bobbie.

She’s more grounded than Lenk, who leaned into Bobbie’s sphinx-like nature, endowing the character with a Mona Lisa smile. What’s more, Coleman’s voice is powerful enough to make the most of the original Bobby’s big numbers without sacrificing contours of personality. (Her rendition of “Being Alive,” the character’s climactic epiphany, had the Hollywood Pantages audience roaring in appreciation.)

Better still, Coleman finds the perfect tone to carry the musical, balancing cockiness and insecurity, loneliness and independence, and irony and sincerity. Indeed, the spirit of Sondheim lives on in her performance.

This gender-flipped production is far from perfect. Elliott plays fast and loose with the period, updating the era so that Bobbie is rarely without her phone, taking selfies and looking at what seem like dating apps. There’s a joke about Prozac, but also one about Sara Lee, the go-to frozen cheesecake brand of my 1970s childhood. The costumes by Bunny Christie, who also designed the geometric sets, follow suit in a parade of fashions that suggest a post-’70s retrospective.

Elliott deals with those elements of the social world that concern her and ignores those that don’t. In one sense, race is a factor, given that Bobbie is now played by a Black woman and several of the couples are cast as interracial. But the musical would need to be substantially revised to deal explicitly with this change and that is not the case here.

The same could be said about the gender swap. Strategic modifications have been made to accommodate the shift, but the production is largely faithful to the spirit of the original. Unencumbered by her own directorial scheme, Elliott leans into the freedom of musical storytelling, a mode in which realism is dabbed on rather than studiously applied.

The inconsistencies and interpretive static never disappear, but Sondheim and Furth’s “Company” comes through where it matters most — theatrically. As I felt when I saw this revival on Broadway, Furth’s book might have benefited from some judicious pruning. But the musical numbers provide more than enough blissful compensation.

Marriage is the main topic, both the joys and despairs, in numbers that make ambivalence energizing, fun, poignant and, most important, resonantly true. “The Little Things You Do Together,” “Sorry-Grateful” and “Marry Me a Little” tackle the subject from different angles, but they prove that lyrical complexity and tunefulness can go hand in hand.

One of the highlights of this revival is the handling of “Getting Married Today.” The source of incapacitating wedding day jitters is now a gay wedding. Jamie (Matt Rodin) vents his acute anxiety in a song that demands the highest level of neurotic showmanship. Rodin is a marvel, delivering with rapid-fire virtuosity lines by Sondheim that are made all the more involving by the sensitive portrayal of husband-to-be Paul (Jhardon DiShon Milton, in a touching performance).

Britney Coleman as Bobbie, Matthew Christian as David and Emma Stratton as Jenny in “Company.”

(Matthew Murphy for MurphyMade)

Of the other supporting cast members, Matt Bittner makes the most of his appearances on stage. In one scene, playing a straitlaced husband who gets high with his wife and Bobbie, he confronts difficult marital feelings his character would normally censor in a comically alert performance that mines Furth’s book for dramatic gold.

Sometimes the novelty of the revival gets the better of the ensemble’s character work. The fault lies less with the performers than with the revival’s hesitant approach to textual changes. Switching Bobby’s trio of girlfriends to Bobbie’s trio of boyfriends, for example, requires more than light textual revision and bold casting choices. (“Barcelona,” however, is nonetheless memorably pulled off by Jacob Dickey’s flight attendant Andy and Coleman’s pleasure-seeking Bobbie.)

Britney Coleman finds the perfect tone to carry the musical, balancing cockiness and insecurity, loneliness and independence, and irony and sincerity.

(Matthew Murphy for MurphyMade)

How does Joanne fare in all of this? Judy McLane is a powerhouse singer, as adept at harmonizing with the ensemble as she is at majestically separating herself from the pack. When the spotlight is squarely on her, as it is in “The Ladies Who Lunch,” she brings the audience to a feverish pitch of Sondheimian ecstasy. But how the song fits into the dramatic arc of Bobbie’s commitment phobia isn’t easy to discern.

There’s a fuzziness to Joanna’s subsequent interaction with Bobbie, when in effect she offers to pimp out her husband to her. I could more or less track the dramatic through line from my knowledge of the original show, but the psychology gets lost in the bravura of the moment.

Despite these qualms and quibbles, I can’t remember ever feeling as invested in Bobby or Bobbie as I did at the Pantages. “Company” is always worth the time, and Coleman anchors the central role with a luminous humanity.