scorecardresearch
Thursday, Mar 28, 2024
Advertisement
Premium

Sixer movie review: A tone-deaf brain drain

Sixer movie review: You know how desperate a film is when it tries to 'win' for all the wrong reasons.

Rating: 1 out of 5
Sixer movie rating Sixer movie review: To be honest, Sixer doesn’t fall under the category of a ‘film’.

Sixer movie cast: Vaibhav Reddy, Pallak Lalwani
Sixer movie director: Chachi
Sixer movie rating: 1 star

In Sixer, Aadhi (Vaibhav) has night blindness aka nyctalopia. No matter where he is, Aadhi tries to get back home by 6 pm sharp. A character, in the beginning, metaphorically describes this: “He’s akin to the sun.” (Read: rises at 6 am; sets at 6 pm). Aadhi doesn’t want to tell others he has vision-related problems. People around him are too brilliant that they don’t find out his disability. How he is caught in weird circumstances forms the plot of Sixer.

Aadhi’s character is inspired by (read: borrowed from) Goundamani’s character ‘Cook Ganesan’ from Prabhu-starrer Chinna Thambi (1991).

Advertisement

Sixer is actually one of those films that has nothing to do with the title. We are shown Aadhi heading a “protest” on the beach, but he’s clueless. We get a parallel track involving a minister, accused of sexual harassment, take on Aadhi.

Pallak Lalwani plays a TV reporter Krithika. (Read: ‘Loosu’ ponnu). She falls for Aadhi despite knowing he is a bundle of lies. She gives cute expressions throughout. Oh, also, she gets to dance with Vaibhav, the lead character. The woman does not get an arc of her own. The bad lip-sync further makes the verboseness harder to bear and I felt like watching a dubbed film. Alas, it wasn’t.

Festive offer

Sixer takes a dig at the LGBTQ+ community. Again, ‘jokes’ on homosexuals aren’t new, but why is it done for ‘cheap laughs’? Usually, this is what happens when a filmmaker runs out of ideas — introduce a gay person and reduce him to a butt of jokes. It is high time the makers understood innocuous humour is unacceptable. I wonder how the ‘socially-conscious’ Censor Board gave a ‘U’ for Sixer.

What is exasperating is we never get a grip on Aadhi’s means and motivations and, most importantly, his emotions. Everything looks staged and the writing is all over the place.

Advertisement

Time and again, we get a filmmaker who is intentionally careless while writing characters with disabilities. Our films are a huge let down when it comes to portraying them. Don’t indulge in an ugly stereotype and call it a film. Some sense, please. If not, some empathy, at least? Why not treat a trans person as any human?

To be honest, Sixer doesn’t fall under the category of a ‘film’. It’s more like a mix and match of several film references (to name a few: Singaravelan and Thiruvannamalai) put together into a half-baked product. I am sure it must have looked great on paper. But it takes a special skill to get things right when translating to screen — that film director Chachi doesn’t seem to have.

First uploaded on: 01-09-2019 at 17:56 IST
Latest Comment
Post Comment
Read Comments
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
close