Sruthi Ganapathy Raman
The little moments get lost in an overwritten, cloying drama. Elan’s film frequently longs to be an inspirational drama and a coming-of-age story all at once. Star struggles to be either.
Inspirational, rags-to-riches stories in cinema follow, and sometimes run the risk of an ancient template. Man learns his purpose, struggles to navigate said purpose, falls down, is fed inspirational monologues, tears are jerked on cue, and he gets up again.
What makes these films (inspirational films) great is not the template itself, but what they do with it. Star is very visibly stuck with the nitty-gritty of this structure, even as it sits on achieving something heartfelt and huge.
It works brilliantly for the film and the genre that nothing comes easy for Kalai, a detail that immediately softens our hearts for him, even before we see him really struggle. We all love an out-of-luck hero.
Instead of doubling down on this pain and hitting us with a sledgehammer of emotions, the film randomly hits pause, and shows endless patience for the most mundane things. Which means we’re made to sit through stretches of turbulent male rage.
Immediately though, laughs and applause are intercut with a stunning moment of gloom and ugly truth — moments like these aren’t hard to come by in Star. It’s just lost in a film that’s obsessed with chasing a hundred other things.