Vishal Menon
Like the 2006 comedy Stranger Than Fiction, Maaveeran too is about a protagonist who starts hearing a strange voice narrate everything that’s happening in his life. If this concept from Stranger Than Fiction gives Maaveeran its heart, then its body belongs to Baasha.
Sathya (Sivakarthikeyan) behaves like a passive nobody, uninterested in matters that are bigger than him. Like how his stoic character contributes to much of the comedy in Doctor, his cowardice results in lovely scenes, even in an otherwise basic love angle. It is Nila (Aditi Shankar) who first initiates a mini transformation in Sathya by getting him the job he’s been working towards.
A dark, hopeless night, a divine intervention and a hero that has accepted his defeat—Sathya gets his superpowers in an epic sequence straight out of a classic Marvel movie. Instead of this superpower instantly making Sathya invincible, he pretty much remains the same right through. As a result, everything Sathya does works out with believable hilarity.
His doubts, his vulnerabilities and his inaction continue almost till the end and the superpower creates as many problems for him as solutions. And that keeps Sathya loveable right through the film. On the other hand, an absolutely in-form Yogi Babu gets the film’s best lines, holding it all together even when the film begins to feel gimmicky.
During many scenes including the interval, the film leaves you with such a high that it becomes difficult to match that later on. But even when the film starts to feel too familiar, the warmth of the characters and the sheer joy of the first hour keeps us invested. Somewhere in the middle, we lost a great film to just another good film.