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'Prince' review: Laughter not guaranteed

Every dialogue in this movie that is intended to be funny is absurd and silly

Prince is the love story of a school teacher who falls for a British girl, Jessica, (played by Maria Ryaboshapka) filled with comedy of errors. Anbu (Sivakarthikeyan) lives in a village, where everyone is simple and have an irreverent sense of humour, near Pondicherry. 

Prince movie plot begins with Anbu’s voice-over, introducing his father Ulaganathan (Sathyaraj). The film starts off promising to be a laugh riot, but as it moves forward, every dialogue that is intended to be funny is absurd and silly. 

Once Anbu accompanies Jessica to a vegetable shop, run by a couple. At the shop, the wife of the vegetable vendor claims that she married him because she fell for his English. When Jessica asks for a bottle gourd, both the shop owner and Anbu do not know what it is. The two struggle to save their face. Then comes one Anbu's students who also doesn't know what bottle gourd is. The entire film is filled with such silly jokes.

And then there is Sathyaraj's Ulaganathan, the grandson of a freedom fighter. He is a man of principles, who wants his son to marry outside caste and religion, but not a Brit girl because his grandfather was killed by the British. He doesn’t have any role in his village but hoists the national flag on Independence Day and Republic Day. His son, a social science teacher, does not know about the World War, Hitler or Charlie Chaplin. It is his British girlfriend who introduces him to Chaplin.

The villain, Bhoopathy (played by Premgi Amaran), fails to impress. 

In the end, Prince talks about humanity and patriotism. But even here if you expect a story or a decent sequence to know what actually the story is, the director disappoints you. Prince director Anudeep, could have thought for a moment that Jathi Ratnalu could have done well in Tollywood, but he somehow chose to give the Kollywood audience a film without a story and a hero without any goals in his life. 

Sivakarthikeyan looks good as always, and the audience could not be faulted for expecting from him something like his earlier Varuthapadatha Vaalibar Sangam or Namma Veetu Pillai. But the actor fails to deliver the laughs that Prince promised.

It is also time that popular actors like Sivakarthikeyan stops normalising stalking in films in the name of comedy. 

Prince cast: Siva Karthikeyan, Sathyaraj, Maria Ryaboshapka and Premgi Amaren. 

Prince director: Anudeep KV. 

Rating: 1/5