Anthologies on OTT are a rage and now you have seasoned film maker Mani Ratnam and Jayendran Panchapakesan producing NAVARASA under Madras Talkies and Qube Technologies

Bejoy Nambiar, Priyadarshan, Karthick Naren, Vasanth, Karthik Subbaraj, Arvind Swami, Rathindran Prasad, Sarjun and Gautham Menon helm the 9 episodes featuring a bevy of actors like Suriya, Vijay Sethupathi, Atharva, Prakash Raj, Yogi Babu, Arvind Swami, Aditi Balan, Rithwika,Parvathy Thiruvothu,Pragaya Martin, Anjali and many more.

An ensemble to portray different emotions NAVARASA is anything but the emotions it attempts to characterize. Despite a generous production house and some amazing technicians NAVARASA is bland and blind, vacillating between babbling and bawling episodes. Not a single episode stands out, while a couple barely manage to be reach the average bar compared to the rest.

The actors too do nothing new. Kollywood is in search of a romantic hero for the last 2 decades and until then you got to manage with Surya strumming his guitar nearing his 50. Vijay Sethupathi will continue to walk the same way in any character he performs and he does not care. Arvind swami tries hard. Prasanna looks lost. Yogi Babu is YB. It’s the women who outperform the men. Revathi, Aditi are wonderful. Anjali gets to do nothing.

Music isn’t anything great to write about. Karthik scores over ARR because of the genre and the lyrics. It’s Elam time and so you got Sontosh Narayanan, knowing what to expect. The cinematographers led by Santosh Sivan do good. Dialogues are all average. All episodes are longer than they should be and Bejoy Nambiar gets to be the best director among the average in NAVARASA.

NAVARASA is a spectacular effort at delivering something dumb. It’s a tiring watch, despite broadcasting on OTT.

9/100

NAVARASA – NACCHU !

B.U. Shreesha