Ayalaan (2024)

Ambitious experimental projects are not new for Tamil cinema. While there have been successful ambitious projects like enthiran and experimental projects like Miruthan and Tik Tik Tik that remain just as an attempt, Ayalaan falls somewhere in the middle, neither successful nor a failure.

Ayalaan is a fairly engaging sci-fi entertainer that is designed specifically to appease it’s target audience, kids and family audience. The biggest positive of the movie was it’s smooth AF VFX. The perseverance of Ravikumar and SK to recreate Alien is applaudable. My mom actually thought they had cast some kid as Alien, such excellent work.

SK as the innocent pure hearted hero is charming and carries the role effortlessly. While the comical timing of the actor is well known, the kryptonite aka emotional scenes he does decently enough to get the pass marks. Yogi Babu is the next biggest positive of the movie, the timing of his one-liners are impeccable. The USP of the movie, the alien was done so well with the VFX that you are able to buy the concept immediately. Ravikumar's story deserves praise as the Hollywood high concept theme has been localised to suit the audience and the movie does have certain surprises that sure falls as the positives.

Technically, the movie is strong. The VFX as mentioned above is excellent. The camera work is brilliant while the cinematography is good as well. However, the music was lacking big time. While the tune of Vera Level Sago is good, the tanglish lyrics butchers the song. Suro is vice-versa, Karky's lyrics are good but the tune didn't mix well for the lyrics. The background music as well lacked the thump that the scenes that were supposed to make you feel energetic or give cinematic highs lulled a lot due to inadequate BGM.

On other negatives, the screenplay starts to lull a lot in the second half and the cliched treatment made it only worse. Aside from a couple of ideas, the movie doesn't have anything new to offer that we haven't seen in umpteen hollywood sci-fi movies. After a point, I wasn't able to invest in the movie or care for the characters due to the tiring screenplay. The dialogues are formulaic that they don't have an impact on you. The caricature one dimensional villain was another weakling in the movie.

~𝗢𝘃𝗲𝗿𝗮𝗹𝗹, 𝗮 𝗱𝗲𝗰𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝘀𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗸𝗮𝗿-𝗲𝘀𝗾𝘂𝗲 𝗺𝗼𝘃𝗶𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁'𝘀 𝗳𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘄𝗮𝘁𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗴𝗼𝗿𝘆.

#Ayalaan