There cannot be a pinch in death
More sharp than this is.
– Imogen in Cymbeline (Act 1, Scene 1)

Who would have thought Vijay’s character in Madurey would succeed so grandly, so effortlessly and, Holy Christ, so quickly, where Martin Luther King, Lyndon Johnson, the marchers at Selma and countless other civil rights activists toiled hard and labored long but yet scored only limited victories  in solving the insurmountable “Negro Problem.”

Or looked at another way, who but a Vijay character could in one shot solve the vexing “Negro Problem” that incensed a million bigots including those white-robed, conical-hatted, cross-burning weirdos of the Ku Klux Klan.

And how shallow is the work of Swedish economist and Nobel laureate Gunnar Myrdal who wrote  An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy compared to the peerless accomplishment of Madurey in tackling the “Negro Problem.”

Viva la Vijay!

Folks, if you think we’ve lost our marbles or that we’ve had one too many a postprandial drink, then you’ve most certainly not watched  Vijay’s 2004 film purgatory Madurey.

No sooner does his bountifully-endowed inamorata Anita (Rakshita) scream out for protection, pointing to an ugly intruder in her home with those time-stopping, soul-chilling, blood-curdling words

Andha Negro thaan….Poi addi

than our hero rushes out to solve the “Negro Problem” once and for all.

My my, and how decisively does Punnaku Pandi resolve the clear and present danger to the pretty belle from the “Negro.”

All with just a wooden club and his sidekick Pandu (Vadivelu) in tow.

“Negro” dispatched. Problem solved. Blazing glory.

Vijay has yet again saved a damsel in distress.

Blow the conches. Beat the drums. Blast the music.

Hey, wait. Is Vijay saving the girl from the “Negro” or the “Negro” from the girl? 😉

Let the mayhem begin. After all, it’s a Vijay movie.

Halley’s Comet of Shitty Movies

Guys, Madurey belongs to the Halley’s Comet arc of bad motion pictures.

A movie this ugly can never be the result of an accident but the outcome of meticulous planning and painstaking effort.

And emerges as rarely as the comet bearing Edmond Halley’s name.

Until up to the half-way mark, we see Vijay as a small-time vegetable seller Madurey selling tomatoes, plantain, brinjal et al to Iyer maamis in traditional attire at a crowded market.

You wanna know what Madurey is up to when he’s not busy in the vegetable market or solving the “Negro Problem” for the buxom college student with the won’t you just step into my boudoir smile pasted on inviting, seductive lips.

Oh, our Machchan paeru Madurey is getting whipped for not returning a loan on time, acting the guardian angel of his family,  tormenting his Caliban companion Pandu, venting his spleen on that besotted neighborhood bajari Mala for wearing his clothes or restoring the facility of speech to his mute younger sister by feigning drowning.

Bah, who needs speech therapists when Vijay is around.

Can’t help but wonder about Dr. Vijay’s treatment recipe for other human ailments like constipation,  infertility, brain tumor, dysmenorrhea, hemorrhoids, AIDS, Herpes et al. 😉

In the few moments left amidst this ceaseless deluge of nonsense raining upon our heads, our hero has a live snake wrapped around his neck and walks around asking all and sundry meenuku kaal irrukka (does the fish have legs) or making a monkey of himself and us, of course, with his insanely hideous song/dance combinations like Machcha paeru Madurey or Bambara kannu, pachcha milaga.

Ah, the torment these old, fading eyes must endure in the autumn of their lives. Muruga!

Sure, it’s been a lengthy life, and we’ve won our fair share of battles but few tribulations have left us as weary and as scarred at the end as our watching of Madurey yesterday.

If all that has passed on the screen so far seems like the outbreak of the Biblical plague, wait  till the second half when a jackass ‘twisted’ director and writer responding to the bark of R.Madhesh pukes up a flashback and ‘twists’ our intestines – Voila, our lowly, market coolie once occupied a high position in the rarified echelons of the Indian bureaucracy waging a doughty campaign against  the oppressive maniacs of society like KTR, played by a bespectacled Pasupathy, seemingly on an overdose of local arrack.

Buxom Squared

If the endearing Rakshita is our hero’s buxom present in Madurey, then the alluring Sonia Agarwal was his buxom past.

Thrusting her ample 36D (??) twin-endowments forward into our corneas, swinging her 40 (??) derriere left and right,  flashing her luscious, fair, elephantine thighs, her micro skirt inches below her mons veneris and pushing Madurey’s face into the bottomless abyss of her cleavage, Rakshita doles out an overdose of Viagra to viewers in the Bambara Kannu song/dance as our dressed-in-all-white hero, rolls on the ground, his feet lifted high, as if he were the omega gal inviting her alpha man Anita to take the plunge. 😉

And to our devoted readers (Srinivas, yes you) who fancy Vijay is a fine dancer, we’d like to have a swig of whatever bottle you are swilling from.

Will someone please take on the onerous task of teaching our beloved Sonia mami the rudiments of dancing. If what Sonia Agarwal  does in the kandein kandein song is dancing, then loose paiya (yes, we’re referring to Prabhakaran is my friend dotard Mu Ka) is the sanest element in Chennai.

Sonia, lifting your legs even if it be in front of the Eiffel Tower is not the same as dancing. At least not in our lexicon. 🙁

Vadivelu is left to meander around mouthing dialogs like Accuse me.

Yes, we did Accuse Him for subjecting us to this unending ordeal.

Stunt Nonsense

True to form, Vijay’s fight scene are the cause of much mirth, all unintended, of course.

Be it the first assault on the bad guys, and on our senses, when the pregnant tea-stall woman is harassed over a loan where bare-handed he knocks the sailings out of a gang of heavily armed thugs with sickles, knives and iron bars, the one in which he, with ease, kicks an auto-rickshaw onto the ground or the one in KTR’s mansion, these are not fights our Na vaerae madhiri Madurey alias James Gaand engages in but a flailing of limbs and gravity-defying comical acts.

A Stinker

The folly of some human ambitions often imposes a heavy price upon many others.

In our case, the end result of Madurey was an uncontrollable fit of crying, a violent throwing up of our lunch and a never to be extinguished anguish in our heart.

Echoing King Cymbeline upon encountering the good Posthumus, with anger on our lips and despair in our heart, we howled after our Madurey ordeal:

Thou basest thing, avoid! hence, from my sight!
If after this command thou fraught the court
With thy unworthiness, thou diest. Away!
Thou’rt poison to my blood.
– Imogen in Cymbeline (Act 1, Scene 1)

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Kuruvi Review – Nonstop Nonsense
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  Punnaku Pandi, Vijay