Abishan Jeevinth's Tourist Family is not that different from C. Prem Kumar's Meiyazhagan. Both films persistently portray kindness as a virtue to be celebrated, given its ability to heal fractured relationships and unite diverse individuals. It's a simple, innocent thought that has now become potent due to political disturbances. The world is on fire - megalomaniac psychopaths are making rules for us. In such a bitter environment, people immediately embrace a Tourist Family or a Meiyazhagan that comes bearing a sweet, warm social message. "Good values" is the new drug of the suffering masses. They are impotent; they cannot stand up to the politicians and depend on someone else to fight their battles. The only battles they are capable of fighting are the ones that occur on Twitter, which, too, mostly happen under false names, fake accounts. So when Prem Kumar or Jeevinth tells these people that affection, hospitality, and neighborliness will triumph in the end, they heave a sigh of relief and become more comfortable in their bubble. They also cherish these filmmakers for conforming to their views and for gently patting them on the head.
In Meiyazhagan, Prem Kumar took goodness to such an extreme length that the end result felt implausible. We were asked to buy the titular character's noble act of selflessness because...he was Arul's relative? It's one thing to peddle goodness; it's another thing to forcefully shove it down the throats of the audience, which is what Prem Kumar did in Meiyazhagan and what Jeevinth does here. The characters in Tourist Family (most of them, at least) are put inside the Kesava Nagar Colony - a place that might as well be hermetically sealed given how no one in the colony talks about politics, music, movies, or any other topic outside the boundaries of the script (even Sri Lanka and its crisis is mentioned as something that simply defines the titular family). The outside world never interrupts the residents' daily routine - unless the script demands it in the form of a police operation towards the end of the film. A bomb blast occurs in Rameswaram, but this news apparently doesn't reach Kesava Nagar Colony. No resident discusses it, mentions it or is seen watching this news on TV. For Jeevinth, these characters might as well be equivalent to lab rats confined within cages for various types of experiments. Jeevinth's experiment is to prove that a good heart can bridge the gap between different sections of society. He's so focused on this narrow objective that he pursues it with single-minded zeal.
This single-minded zeal gives rise to an incurious film whose strength lies in the okayish, functional performances and some two to three jokes that make you smile. Nithu (Mithun Jai Sankar) is a college graduate who wanted to get a job so that he could take care of Dharmadas (M. Sasikumar), his father. Where did he study? What did he study? What career did he want to pursue? We are told that Nithu has a girlfriend in Sri Lanka. Doesn't he have any friends who wish to check up on him, who miss him? What about Nithu's younger brother, Mulli (Kamalesh Jagan)? Does he not miss Sri Lanka and his old buddies? Tourist Family solely focuses on Nithu's girlfriend to create symmetry between his love life and that of the landlord's daughter, Kural (Yogalakshmi). Both lovers lose their romance almost identically (their partners get into a relationship with someone else). What this suggests - apart from the fact that the notions of the writer-director are somewhat regressive, considering he is unable to see Nithu and Kural as just friends - is that Jeevinth knows how to write neatly. In another scene, he shows us a drunk Dharmadas to, ahem, introduce shades of complexity. Jeevinth might know how to write like a first-bench student, but he is inept at infusing life into his writing. That scene with an intoxicated Dharmadas generates more sentimentality, more morally-sound points. Nithu says that a woman could have been forced into marriage by the members of her family, and Dharmadas realizes how responsible his elder son is. But something crucial seems to be missing from this scene. It doesn't have weight; it doesn't sting (we don't end up seeing Dharmadas any differently). All it reveals is Jeevinth's tendency to dot the i's and cross the t's (like Ashwath Marimuthu in Dragon), which is something he does again during a funeral speech.
Jeevinth gains some dramatic charge when Mangaiyarkarasi (Sreeja Ravi) asks Vasanthi (Simran) to wake her husband, Gunasekar (Elango Kumaravel). We are led to believe that Gunasekar has met his maker, but he turns out to be alive. Before you can charge Jeevinth for lame emotional manipulation, we are told that Mangaiyarkarasi - out of shock, out of fear of living without the person she loves - has died. It all feels less like a drama and more like an attempt to pull the rug from beneath your feet (emotional rug pulling?). Instead of thinking, "Wow, the couple really loved each other," we think, "Hmm, the director knows how to present an emotional beat as a twist." Even here, one can spot Jeevinth's lack of imagination and incuriosity. Gunasekar and Mangaiyarkarasi eloped, so they have no connection with their respective families. When and where did they meet? What does he do? Did Mangaiyarkarasi have any career-oriented goals as a young girl, or was she raised in a traditional family where women were primarily assigned household duties? Gunasekar and Mangaiyarkarasi are just emotional devices. They exist to provide us with a blueprint regarding what a perfect marriage should look like. Young people might end up creating "Couple Goals" posts out of this relationship.
This is Jeevinth's directorial debut, and he really needs to work on his aesthetics. His visuals remind you of TV serials. During the climax, when the police are about to confront Dharmadas and his family, Jeevinth stretches the suspense like a soap director who stretches a dramatic moment through "dhum tana na na" sounds and cuts between different camera angles. But the audience apparently doesn't care about all these things. They are enthusiastically embracing Jeevinth's shallow vision. I see something like Tourist Family and Meiyazhagan and think that these movies can only work for those who give a few coins to beggars, make a small donation to a charity, or post good messages online — and then believe they have done their part in fixing the world, in making it right. These days, the real heroes are those who can project a carefully crafted version of themselves — one that mirrors the majority's beliefs. It doesn't matter how poorly they speak; as long as they pander to the crowd, they will be embraced unconditionally.
Final Score- [3.5/10]
Reviewed by - Vikas Yadav
Follow @vikasonorous on Twitter
Publisher at Midgard Times