This past weekend, Cineswami was importuned to watch the latest Vijay vehicle Nanban, it being Sankranti/Pongal. Obviously, the whole world and its canine friend knows that the film is a remake of Rajkumar Hirani’s 3 Idiots and the same world dwellers and their barking brethren would have seen the Hindi film

Apparently not, as our friends in Kollywood purchased the Tamil remake rights and entrusted the reins to Shankar, the biggest Indian director. Upon watching the film, the first thing that strikes you is how incredibly lazy it is. Apart from a few song picturisations, which themselves feel cut and pasted from past Shankar triumphs, there is absolutely nothing new in Nanban, if you have watched 3 Idiots that is. The plot is exactly the same, the dialogue appears to have been translated from the Hindi by a machine and what’s worse, for much of the film it’s a shot by shot rendering. Clearly, Shankar the director was on a break from making two Rajinikanth films back to back and having too good a time to put his own stamp on Nanban. Click here to read more