prince tamil movie reviews

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Prince movie review: Sivakarthikeyan's charm makes this silly, quirky comedy fun

Prince movie review: sivakarthikeyan's charm and his chemistry with sathyaraj elevate this quirky but silly comedy to a fun watch..

Sivakarthikeyan ’s Prince could be described as an experimental comedy film. I use the word experimental because it isn’t wholesomely entertaining as some of his other films but at the same time it works as a quirky attempt at bringing forth a different style of humour. You could even call it silly humour, which worked beautifully in Anudeep’s last film, Jathi Ratnalu. In Prince, too, it works to a large extent and that’s what makes the comedy refreshing, if not wildly entertaining. The film works when you don’t take it seriously. Also read: Don review: Sivakarthikeyan’s film is a predictable but likeable coming-of-age drama

The plot is simple. It’s about a Tamil boy (Sivakarthikeyan plays Anbu) from a fictional village near Pondicherry falling in love with a British girl (Maria plays Jessica). Sathyaraj plays Anbu’s father (Ulaganathan) and he’s a staunch anti-casteist, who wants his son to marry outside their caste. When Anbu, a social science teacher, falls in love with his colleague Jessica (British), an English teacher, he hopes that his father would be proud of him to fall in love with someone from a different country altogether. Instead of extending his support for their love, Ulaganathan opposes the idea because his father was killed by the British during the independence struggle. Therefore, he doesn’t want someone from that country in his family.

The film relies a lot on quirky one-liners and wordplay. Anudeep’s style of comedy is not everyone’s cup of tea. If you loved what he did with Jathi Ratnalu, Prince won’t disappoint you. Even though the film is not consistently as funny as Jathi Ratnalu, the jokes do work wherever they’re used.

Nobody else but Sivakarthikeyan could’ve made Prince work to this extent. He holds the film together with his charming screen presence and his knack of doing comedy is unmatchable. Sathyaraj is equally good as the father and complements Sivakarthikeyan well in so many scenes. The chemistry between them really comes alive on the screen and it’s a treat to watch.

Prince, as the promos promised, ends up as a harmless romantic comedy. The comedy stretches work and generate ample laughs to keep you invested. The dull stretches do serve as a roadblock in an otherwise breezy story that touches upon the theme of fake nationalism.

Director: KV Anudeep

Cast: Sivakarthikeyan, Sathyaraj and Maria Riaboshapka

• Sivakarthikeyan

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Prince Movie Review : This comedy falls flat despite quirky premise

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Prince movie review: Sivakarthikeyan’s absurd comedy drama works in parts

Prince movie review: director anudeep’s brand of comedy is unique and might not be for everyone..

I should perhaps put a disclaimer that I haven’t seen Jathi Ratnalu , and so I found the comedy of director Anudeep pretty unique and largely silly in Tamil. Mind you, you don’t end up laughing at the film. The absurdity of it all is very much intended. Many stretches are laugh riots – especially the one around the bottle gourd. The heroine Jessica (Maria Ryaboshapka) asks the hero Anbu (Sivakarthikeyan) to take her to a good vegetable shop. They end up in a neighborhood store run by a couple. The wife proudly claims that she married the guy because he is well-versed in English. Yet, when Jessica asks for a bottle gourd, he doesn’t know what that vegetable is supposed to be. Neither does our hero. Now, the whole sequence is about two guys trying to save their faces in front of their loved ones. The exchanges are mindless, ludicrous, and silly… but they are outrageously funny. However, we don’t get those bits a lot in Prince, which is otherwise a mediocre fare.

The brain of Anudeep should be an exciting place. It is hard to articulate his sense of comedy, and harder to come up with things like how Anbu’s voiceover introduces his father Ulaganathan (Sathyaraj): “ Ivar thaan enga appa. Enna vida moothavaru (This is my dad. He is older than me).” I was caught off guard. I had to turn right and left to make sure that what I heard was right. A few more minutes into the film, I understood the brand of comedy. There’s nothing funny about the lines, the humour stems from how incongruous and absurd they are with the situation. How do you explain this emotional dialogue from Anbu towards the end of the film that tries to soothe his estranged dad: “ Pechu pottila jeichapa kuda, Appanu naan un pera thaanae sonane (When I won in speech competition, I proudly called you as my father).” What’s funny in stating the obvious, you might ask. Still, it’s hard to figure out why you are laughing at it. The moment you try to explain Anudeep’s sense of humour, you will end up missing the point. It’s neither sophisticated nor pedestrian… I would like to call it ‘ingeniously silly’.

All said and done, Prince as a film fails to keep you engrossed. It is so obvious that the hilarious stretches are connected by a generic thread about a love story between a Tamil guy and a Brit girl. Anbu’s father Ulaganathan is an anti-casteist villain. Son of a slain freedom fighter, he takes pride in denouncing caste, creed and religion, but when his daughter marries someone in the family, he is shamed. So, he warns Anbu that he should never marry anyone from the same caste. Anbu, a social science teacher, exceeds his father’s expectations by falling in love with his colleague Jessica, an English teacher. Not just caste, he transcends race, ethnicity, country, etc with his love. So, the conflict arises when Ulaganathan realises that Jessica is British. He doesn’t want someone from the country that enslaved Indians for two hundred years and who also killed his father.

However, ‘conflict’ is a strong word for a film that doesn’t take itself seriously even for a nanosecond. There’s only a semblance of a story that doesn’t move forward at all. You keep waiting for the next good stretch. If you were to watch the film on OTT, you would have skipped the customary bridges that connect the good stretches, and you would still not miss anything. Another redeeming factor of Prince is Sivakarthikeyan. Just his affable presence sets a good mood, and one should give it to him for experimenting with this unique humour. Perhaps, this is the most experimental movie in his career yet. When the film ended with the end card ‘Subam’, an obsolete practice in Tamil cinema, I realised that I won’t remember Prince for a long time. But that doesn’t seem to be the intention. The point is to make you laugh for those few stretches, and maybe it’s a win… after all.

Prince movie cast : Sivakarthikeyan, Maria Ryaboshapka, Sathyaraj Prince movie director : Anudeep Prince movie rating: 2.5 stars

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Kirubhakar Purushothaman is a Principal Correspondent with Indian Express and is based out of Chennai. He has been writing about Tamil cinema and a bit about OTT content for the past eight years across top media houses. Like many, he is also an engineer-turned-journalist from Tamil Nadu, who chose the profession just because he wanted to make cinema a part of his professional life.   ... Read More

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Prince Review: Silly, But Funny

Movie: Prince Rating: 2.75/5 Banner: Sree Venkateswara Cinemas LLP Cast: Sivakarthikeyan, Maria Riaboshapka, Sathyaraj, and others Story: Anudeep KV & Mohan Sato Music: Thaman S Cinematography: Manoj Paramahamsa Editor: Praveen KL Producers: Suniel Narang, D.SureshBabu, Puskur Ram Mohan Rao Release Date: October 21, 2022

Ever since “Prince” was announced, the film generated hype as it marks the combination of Tamil rising star Sivakarthikeyan and “JathiRatnalu” fame Anudeep. The bilingual hit the theaters today in Telugu and Tamil simultaneously.

Let’s find out whether Anudeep generates laughs again.

Story: Anand (Sivakarthikeyan) works as a teacher in school. His father Vishwanatham (Sathyaraj, a retired employee, wants his children to marry outside their caste or religion.

Vishwanatham is overjoyed when he finds his son fell in love with a foreigner Jessica (Maria), an English teacher in his son’s school.

The only problem is that Vishwanatham hates British people and Jessica turns out to be a British woman.

How will Anand resolve this issue and get married to Jessica?

Artistes’ Performances: Sivakarthikeyan became a huge star in the Tamil film industry with a series of hits like “Doctor” and “Don” and he is good at comedy. The role of Anand is in his zone. He pulls it off so easily.

Ukrainian actress Maria Riaboshapka suits perfectly. Sathyaraj is a huge asset to this film. He takes the responsibility of the main comedian. The film doesn’t have separate comedians. The comedy parts are taken care of by Sivakarthikeyan and Sathyaraj.

Premgi Amaren as a land grabber is neat. The film has only Tamil actors.

Technical Excellence: Thaman has given a peppy soundtrack. Two songs stand out – “Jessica Chilaka” and “‘Bimbilikki Pilapi”. The visuals are bright and colorful.

The film has a short running time but it gives a feel of a lengthy film due to its flimsy plotline. 

Highlights: Anudeep’s mark dialogues The first half The climax comedy

Drawback: No emotional connect Repetitive jokes

Analysis Sathyaraj plays a character who boasts of himself as a very knowledgeable person. He tells his son’s girlfriend that he has mastery over the Telugu language. Around the same time, his son’s phone rings and the ring tone is “Lusku Tapa Lasku Tapa” song. She asks what that means. The funniness of this situation cannot be described in words. Only one would get it while watching. Then there is a five-minute comedy scene about “Bottle gourd” aka sorakaya. After this another worth mentioning scene is of the police station with Anand Raj and the friends of Shiva Karthikeyan. These are three sequences in “Prince" which make the audience laugh.  

Anudeep has a peculiar style of comedy writing. His situations look silly but they work well if the actors can pull them off. Sivakarthikeyan and Sathyaraj have done their best in many places.

The comedy written here is for an educated A center audience.  This cannot be relished by the C-center audience who doesn't know about bottle gourd and Cambridge. Such viewers may miss the taste in funny single liners. 

Moreover, nativity is totally missing in the film with Tamil actors all over. There should have been a mix of Telugu audience like in pan India style films. Had that been done, the range of the film would have gone to the next level. Barring that limitation, everything goes well. 

Anudeep ends his films well. In “Prince”, too, it ended on a funny note. All said, “Prince” is neither a laughing riot nor a boring watch. It lands somewhere in between. Like Anudeep’s previous movie, it is silly but offers some decent comedy portions.

Bottom line: Works in parts

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Tags: Prince Prince Movie Review Prince Review Prince Rating Prince Movie Rating Prince Telugu Movie Review

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‘Prince’ Review: Sivakarthikeyan’s Film Is a Quirky Take on Love

Prince is the first collaboration between tamil star sivakarthikeyan and telugu filmmaker anudeep., ‘prince’ review: anudeep & sivakarthikeyan’s quirky tale on british-indian love.

If you are from a country which was once colonized by Britain and if you felt sad for Queen Elizabeth’s recent death, you might sync well with the complicated emotion behind Prince .

The story revolves around Anbu ( Sivakarthikeyan ), a school teacher who bunks classes to watch films. A British woman, Jessica (Maria Ryaboshapka) becomes his reason to be back in school with full attendance.

Anbu’s father (Sathyaraj) is a progressive man who urges his son to love a girl outside of their caste and religion. However, he is against their love as he is a staunch patriot who hates the British for enslaving Indians.

Are You Guilty of Appreciating Dark Humour and LOL’ing at World War 3 Jokes?

The film touches upon colonialism, patriotism, and discrimination based on caste, class and religion, all while being quirky cracking lame jokes.

It raises questions on love at first sight, war and humanity. However, it goes past them casually, for it doesn’t take itself too seriously and also urges us not to.

Right from the first scene, Prince registers that it is not here to take any heavily opinionated stands, rather just explore the absurdities and the silliness of a British-Indian couple’s love story.

The sequence where Sivakarthikeyan explains his patriotism in the funny Varuthapadatha Valibar Sangam style and the cheeky digs at his own super hit lyricals like ‘Gumuru Tappara’ and ‘ Halamathi Habibo ’ from Beast works well.

The film is simple with its ambition to deliver a full-length comedy flick, nothing more or less.

A still from Prince

Photo courtesy: Youtube

The actor-director duo try to do what they intend — coherently stitch a bunch of comedic sketches in the pretence of telling a substantial story just like their previous hilarious works, Sivakarthikeyan’s Doctor and Anudeep’s Jathi Ratnalu.

However, in Prince , despite the tremendous opportunity to delve into different kinds of humour, especially with such an off-beat premise and world full of weird characters, it predominantly relies just on the dialogue delivery.

It does work at many places with an embarrassingly silly setup but falls flat in the rest, letting the audience have some chuckles instead of a laughter riot.

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Thaman’s music and Sivakarthikeyan’s terrific dance moves do all the heavy lifting for Prince while the screenplay is lazy.

Maria shines in her Tamil debut. Actors Sathyaraj, Soori, Anand raj, Sathish and Youtubers Rahul and Bhaarath perform adequately. Manoj Paramahamsa’s brilliant cinematography is quite evident through the vibrant visuals.

Sivakarthikeyan isn't yet another star. Coming from a non-filmy background to becoming a popular standup comedian, a celebrated television host to a huge star, he is the perfect embodiment of ‘Zero to Hero’ transformation and an inspirational icon for thousands of youth who have nothing else in hand but talent.

And hence, considering him as a role model and watching him as a fan barely meeting his own standards is not satiating enough.

Not that Prince isn’t good. It has interesting elements and does make you laugh at times, but just that it feels like a film that would have worked better had it come a few years back when he was still not the big thing he is today. Unfortunately, he has set his bars high.

The bilingual film, Prince is running in cinemas now.

‘Ammu’ Review: Aishwarya Lekshmi is Terrific In Gripping Social Drama

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Prince Movie Review (2022)

Anudeep kv's 'prince', with sivakarthikeyan and maria ryaboshapka, applies the 'jathi ratnalu' formula to a love story and falls flat.

Prince Movie Cast & Crew

Anudeep KV's USP is silliness. In Jathi Ratnalu , he roped in three actors: Naveen Polishetty, Priyadarshi and Rahul Ramakrishna. And he used these actors as punching bags for his brand of brilliantly nonsensical one-liners. I took some time to warm up to the film, but once I got on its wavelength, it became a blast. Anudeep treats silly situations in a silly way. He also treats serious situations in a silly way. Even when we think we are in for major melodrama, he keeps undercutting the mood with humour. He goes for the same approach in Prince , but this time, it doesn't work. Why? The first reason may be Sivakarthikeyan. This is right up the actor's zone and he is excellent, but he is also too big a star. This film may have worked for him before Kedi Billa Killadi Ranga , but today, after his rapid ascent to the top, we expect something a little… substantial, something big-screen worthy.

That, sadly, happens only during the songs by Thaman, which are grandly staged. Otherwise, the film is an oddly small, TV-level affair. (Again, with a smaller actor at the centre, it might not have seemed so small.) And we come to the second reason Prince doesn't work. In Jathi Ratnalu , Anudeep's anything-goes sensibility was a perfect fit for an anything-goes story. Here, the story is actually about something – or many things. It's about the irrelevance of caste and borders between countries. It's about the importance of humanity, which is possibly why the Sivakarthikeyan character is named Anbu. It's about how the British still own Indian soil – or land. And it's about Anbu falling for a Brit named Jessica, and played by Maria Ryaboshapka. This romance is opposed by Anbu's father (Sathyaraj) because of, well, what the Brits did on Indian soil.

What surprised me – and not in a good way – was the earnestness with which Anudeep approaches these issues and messages. In a film with this tonality, who wants to hear (from Jessica) that the British left behind a legacy of good things, too? Who wants a borderline-serious subplot with Premgi Amaren as a shady real-estate dealer? Why inflate the self-importance of a meant-to-be-silly film with key events taking place on January 26 and August 15? Why get all melodramatic with the Sathyaraj character in the second half? Yes, a lot of this is intercut with silly lines – in the spirit of the overall film – but this technique doesn't always work. 

The stretch with guest star Soori is a bomb. A bit woven around Charlie Chaplin is a bomb. A potential fight scene in a sports bar is a bomb. The flashback with Jessica's grandmother is a serious bomb. The strange characterisation of her father is a bomb. Jessica's "boy bestie" gag is a bomb. At one point, she asks Anbu why he loves her. Good question. The script is too lazy to think up an answer.

Prince is a chain link of missed opportunity after missed opportunity. Even the slapstick fight is not as slapsticky as it should be. I loved the sudden appearance of a cactus plant, but it doesn't do anything as crazy as it sounds. What's not bad? There's a not-bad sequence with Anandraj as a cop. There's a Monty Python-esque stretch (or Goundamani-Senthil-esque strech) about a vegetable. And like in Jathi Ratnalu , the hero gets to make a big, rousing speech that's filled with funny, nonsensical touches. This portion is the only one where the issues and the silliness come together organically, and the tricky mix is beautifully handled by the writing. And I loved the hero-entry scene. You think it's going to be one thing. It cleverly becomes something else – and you can't imagine anyone but Sivakarthikeyan pulling this off. But Prince is proof that likeability on screen is not enough to make a movie.

About Author

Baradwaj Rangan

National Award-winning film critic Baradwaj Rangan, former deputy editor of The Hindu and senior editor of Film Companion, has carved a niche for himself over the years as a powerful voice in cinema, especially the Tamil film industry, with his reviews of films. While he was pursuing his chemical engineering degree, he was fascinated with the writing and analysis of world cinema by American critics. Baradwaj completed his Master’s degree in Advertising and Public Relations through scholarship. His first review was for the Hindi film Dum, published on January 30, 2003, in the Madras Plus supplement of The Economic Times. He then started critiquing Tamil films in 2014 and did a review on the film Subramaniapuram, while also debuting as a writer in the unreleased rom-com Kadhal 2 Kalyanam. Furthermore, Baradwaj has authored two books - Conversations with Mani Ratnam, 2012, and A Journey Through Indian Cinema, 2014. In 2017, he joined Film Companion South and continued to show his prowess in critiquing for the next five years garnering a wide viewership and a fan following of his own before announcing to be a part of Galatta Media in March 2022.

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Prince (U) 21/Oct/2022 Romance, Comedy 2hrs 11mins

Critics Review

A clean absurd comedy that struggles with the consistency of laughs.

Prince isn�t as funny or entertaining as it should have been. But a couple of stretches bring the roof down. It is a clean absurd comedy with an important message at its core. I really wish that a lot more jokes worked but this is a simple film that deserves respect for its intentions. (more)

Source: Bharath Vijayakumar, MovieCrow

Sivakarthikeyan and Anudeep�s madcap flick offers sporadic laughs

Sivakarthikeyan is in his prime form as Anbu in Prince. His expressions and one-liners are perfect for the situation. And we can literally see the real Sivakarthikeyan playing to his strength on screen. Sathyaraj, as a veteran, explores comedy to a large extent in this film. Maria did a fair job in her debut performance. The real surprise is Premgi Amaren who played the role of land-grabbing mafia head, Boopathy. The audiences are so used to seeing Premgi Amaren in a fun role and to see him playing a serious (to some extent) was a new experience altogether. (more)

Source: Janani, India Today

This comedy falls flat despite quirky premise

There are a few stretches that offer a glimpse at the promise this subject might have presented to the makers. Like a scene involving bottle gourd, a go-for-broke pj-filled scene at a police station and the climax. But in between such moments of inspired silliness is not inanity but dead air. (more)

Source: TOI, Times Of India

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