| Panchathantiram | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | K. S. Ravikumar |
| Produced by | P. L. Thennapan |
| Written by | Kamal Haasan Crazy Mohan |
| Narrated by | Simran |
| Starring | Kamal Haasan Simran Ramya Krishnan Jayaram Ramesh Aravind Sriman Yugi Sethu |
| Music by | Deva |
| Cinematography | Arthur A. Wilson |
| Editing by | Thanigachalam |
| Release date(s) | June 27, 2002 |
| Country | India |
| Language | Tamil |
Panchathantiram (Tamil: பஞ்சதந்திரம்) is a 2002 Tamil comedy film directed by K. S. Ravikumar and written by Crazy Mohan. The film features Kamal Haasan, Simran and Ramya Krishnan in the lead roles, with a large supporting cast including Jayaram, Ramesh Aravind and Nagesh
The film opened to positive reviews from critics, and made profits at the box office.[1][2]
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Ramachandramoorthy or Ram.C.M alias Ram (Kamal Haasan) is a pilot based in Canada and an irredeemable skirt-chaser. In course of a midair hijack situation, he meets Mythili (Simran). Mythiil and Ram thwart the hijack and save the plane.
They fall in love and get married. After marriage Ram quits his playboy character and remain faithful to his wife. Ram's four closest buddies Ayyappan Nair (Jayaram), Vedantham (Vedham) Iyer (Yugi Sethu), Ganesh Hegde (Ramesh Aravind) and Hanumanth Reddy (Sriman) are present at the wedding — minus their wives. One day, when Ram helps Nirmala (Devayani) (Ganesh Hegde's ex-lover who tries to suicide since Ganesh Hegde marries his relative due to parents' complusion) from abstaining her from suicide, Mythili misinterprets and presumes that he is two-timing her, and flies off to India to her parents' home. And Ram goes chasing after. Further misunderstanding occurs when he goes to meet Mythilli, drunk and in the middle of the night goes to another house downstairs of Mythili's house.
To take his mind off Mythili for a while, his four friends drive him down to Bangalore and fix him up in a room, complete with call girl Maragadavalli alias Maggi (Ramya Krishnan). Ram won't have any of it. He gets into a fight with Maggi, then dashes over to his friends' room. To salvage the situation, Iyer hurries off to Ram's room and finds Maggi dead. Panicking, Nair, Iyer, Hegde and Reddy decide to get rid of the body in spite of Ram’s pleas to call the police. They manage to roll the dead body in a blanket and carry it over to their car. A mysterious ‘Sardar’ (Ramesh Khanna) watches over this. The friends dispose of the body in a dry river and drive over to Chennai to lead their normal lives.
Ram discovers a cache of diamonds inside the dead girl's cell phone and spoils the plans of the Sardar to steal them. Meanwhile, Mythili is goaded by her parents to give Ram one more chance and she arrives at Ram’s house. In the tussle with the Sardar, Ram removes the Sardars hat and mythili mistakes the Sardars long hair for a girl and leaves Ram once again. The Sardar manages to escape.
The friends get very nervous when they learn of a news article regarding the discovery of a dead body in the same area that they disposed off their dead body. A traditional festival (Ugadhi) has the wives of the four friends plan a party. While planning, Mythili overhears a conversation among them regarding their husband’s friends Ram’s fight with a Sardar and how his wife thought that it was a girl he was having an affair with. Mythili reveals her identity to the wives and gets invited to the party to be rejoined with Ram.
As everyone is present in the party, a twist comes when the supposedly 'dead Maggi' lands up, demanding her diamonds back. She then reveals the truth. The diamonds belongs to her diamond smuggling boss (Manivannan) and she had stolen it from him. She saw an opportunity to make everyone believe she is dead when Ram’s friend mistakes ketchup to be blood and thinks that she was dead. The dead body belonged is of her boss's girlfriend that she killed and managed to get into the blanket when the friends weren’t looking.
Ram with help from his friends, and the Sardar, who happens to be an undercover police officer trying to find the diamonds, saves everyone from Maggi and her boss. Mythilli, promises to change her over suspicious ways and both get back together. The movie ends with Ram asking if he could get the same attention his son is getting.
Originally Krishnamachari Srikkanth was supposed to essay the role later played by Yuhi Sethu, but dropped out. Sethu signed on revealing that Kamal Haasan had approached him to be a part of his two previous films, Thenali and Pammal K. Sambandam too, which he did not take up.[3] Sriman was signed after appearing alongside Kamal Haasan in Pammal K. Sambandam, with which the latter was impressed.
The film started shoot in February 2002 and shot in Canada for seventeen days.[4] In April 2002, Kamal Haasan was prevented from boarding a Los Angeles-bound flight in Toronto during the making of the film, with the security preventing him from passing due to his Islamic-sounding surname.[5] The period of shoot also coincided with the death of Simran's cousin Monal, with Simran choosing to remain on sets in Canada rather than fly back to be with her family.[6] In June 2002, the five friends in the film along with Deva took part in a promotional tour to publicise the soundtrack in Bangalore.[7] The film faced trouble during censorship and parts of a song featuring Ramya Krishnan were subsequently cut, giving the film a U/A (Parental Guidance) rating.[8] Hence the film was delayed for two weeks after an original planned release date of June 14, 2002.[9]
The film opened to positive reviews from critics, with the critic from The Hindu citing that Crazy Mohan's dialogue was "the mainstay", describing the film as "completely entertaining". The reviewer also praised the film's performances claiming that "with suitable slapstick, apt body language and timing and modulation that tickle, the veteran (Kamal Haasan) makes a mark yet again."[10] Similarly, another critic claimed that "Crazy Mohan steals the scenes most of the time with his rib-tickling comedies, one-liners, and sensible timings", giving the film a positive review.[11] Furthermore, reviewers from The Screen dubbed the film as a "clean comic-entertainer", adding that "director KS Ravikumar deserves a pat for weaving out a good screenplay based on Kamal Haasan’s story idea and creating a laugh riot".[12][13]
The film was met with an above average response at the box office, making profits for the producers.[14] Kamal Haasan had distributed the film in the Karnataka region.[15] A sequel to the film was planned and Ravikumar had hoped to film scenes on a cruise liner, but the project failed to take off.[16]
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