Nannbenda

Nannbenda
Directed by	Jagadish
Produced by	Udhayanidhi Stalin
Written by	Jagadish
Starring	Udhayanidhi Stalin Nayantara N. Santhanam
Music by	Harris Jayaraj
Cinematography	Balasubramaniem
Edited by	Vivek Harshan
Production company	Red Giant Movies
Distributed by	Red Giant Movies Lotus Five Star (Malaysia)
Release dates	2 April 2015 (2015-04-02)
Running time	151 minutes
Country	India
Language	Tamil
Box office	1.20 crore (US$190,000) (Chennai)(1st Weekend) [1]

Nannbenda (English: You are truly my friend) is a 2015 Indian Tamil romantic comedy film ^[2] written and directed by Jagadish starring Udhayanidhi Stalin and Nayantara in the lead roles, with Santhanam essaying an important role. The movie was released on 2 April 2015.^[2]

Plot

Sathya (Udhayanidhi Stalin) is an unemployed youth who hails from Thanjavur. He goes to Tiruchchirapalli on the last day of each month to make use of the salary earned by his friend Sivakozhundu (Santhanam), who works as a manager in a Trichy-based hotel, for his own benefit. During one such trip, he encounters Ramya (Nayantara), who works in Axis Bank, and instantly falls in love with her. Initially, Ramya rebuffs Sathya's advances, but soon reciprocates his feelings after giving him a loan to revive the failing hotel where Sivakozhundu works, despite the fact that the hotel's management is a known defaulter. However, they fall apart shortly after, when Sathya finds amusing the fact that Ramya was imprisoned for 10 days for accidentally killing the dog belonging to her former boss Senthamarai (Manobala) in anger at being insulted by him in public. Sathya tries various ways to win back Ramya, all of which irritate Ramya further, to the point that she asks Sathya to leave Trichy for good. Sathya sadly obliges.

Meanwhile, in the locality where Ramya and Sivakozhundu live, there exists a rivalry between the gangs of "Scorpio" Shankar (Rajendran) and "Baby" Kumar. Shankar wants to kill Ramya in revenge for taking away his Mahindra Scorpio since he had not repaid the loan he took to buy the Scorpio. He also wants Sathya and Sivakozhundu dead as they had once beaten him and thrown his body onto a Punjab-bound lorry in a drunken state. When he confronts the duo in a local park soon after Sathya is forced to leave Trichy, he is killed by someone from behind. That killer escapes, and the blame falls on Sathya and Sivakozhundu, who only make matters worse for themselves by getting caught holding the knife which killed Shankar. The duo are thrown into prison, and with seemingly no evidence in favour of them, they face a term of several years in prison or even a death sentence. But Ramya, who heard about the incident, saves the duo by convincing Thangadurai (Karunakaran), a police inspector and a childhood enemy of Sathya and Sivakozhundu, to watch the video taken from the CCTV camera installed at the park, which showed that Shankar's killer was none other than "Baby" Kumar, who is arrested. Thangadurai informs the duo about the good news, but adds that he is not going to bail them out in court the next day in revenge for being constantly humiliated at their hands in childhood. Although Thangadurai has no intention to keep the duo in jail and just wanted to give them a scare before they are freed, Sathya and Sivakozhundu are unaware about his real intentions and escape later that night with a plan to kill him. But when they find out the truth from Ramya, they try to return to jail since escaping from prison is a very serious offence which would keep them in jail even if they are declared innocent in the murder case. Unfortunately, they are unable to find the secret entrance to the prison through which they had earlier escaped, and with daybreak approaching, the duo are resigned to their fate until they see two other criminals escaping from the same secret entrance. They capture them. Later that day, Sathya and Sivakozhundu's names are cleared in the Shankar murder case and they are also not prosecuted for escaping from the prison since they had prevented two criminals from escaping.

The movie ends with Sathya and Ramya reconciling and getting married happily.

Cast

Production

In July 2013, Udhayanidhi Stalin revealed that he would produce and appear in a venture titled Nannbenda alongside Santhanam and that the project would be directed by Jagadish, an assistant to director M. Rajesh.^[3][4] Nazriya Nazim was initially approached to play the female lead role but the she turned down the offer.^[2] Kajal Aggarwal subsequently agreed terms and signed on to star in the film.^[5]

The first look of the film was released in January 2014, with confirmation that the cinematography would be handled by Balasubramaniem and music composed by Harris Jayaraj, both collaborating with Stalin for his third successive venture as an actor.^[6] Later that month, it was announced that Nayantara had replaced Kajal Aggarwal and would collaborate with Stalin for the second time after Idhu Kathirvelan Kadhal.^[7] Tamannaah agreed to appear in a cameo role as herself and shot for an entire day for the film in Chennai in April 2014.^[8] Sherin was reported to be playing a crucial role, returning to Tamil films after nearly four years.^[9]

Music

The film's soundtrack album and background score was composed by Harris Jayaraj. The soundtrack album consists of six tracks. Harris is collaborating with Udhayanidhi Stalin for the third time in this project. The music rights were purchased by Sony Music India. The track list of the soundtrack was released by Sony Music on 19 December 2014.^[10] A video teaser of the "Nee Sunno New Moono" song was released by Udhayanidhi on his YouTube production page on 21 December 2014.^[11] The album was released on 23 December 2014. Actors Suriya and Arya attended the audio launch as chief guests.^[12]

Release

The satellite rights of the film were sold to Sun TV.^[13]

Critical response

The film received mixed to negative reviews. M.Suganth of The Times of India rated the film 3 out of 5 and wrote"… it exploits formula to the hilt and like a well-oiled machine, does what it set out to be".^[14] Nicy V.P of The International Business Times gave 2 stars out of 5 and wrote "To conclude 'Nannbenda' is a forgettable movie and is meant for only for those people who badly crave to see Nayanthara onscreen".^[15] Gautaman Bhaskaran of The Hindustan Times rated 1 out of 5 and wrote "Honestly, Nannbenda is a 151-minute of sheer boredom, liberally peppered with juvenile jokes and intolerably silly situations". ^[16] Sudhir Srinivasan of The Hindu wrote "Nanbenda: A comedy that isn’t funny".^[17] Anupama Subramanian of Deccan Chronicle rated the film 2 stars and wrote that "the film falls prey to a weak script".^[18] Sify criticised the script citing that " the screenplay is painfully predictable and you will find yourself chuckling and cringing alternately while watching the film".^[19]

References

External links

• Nannbenda at the Internet Movie Database