GOAT Movie Review: Venkat Prabhu’s film wonderfully champions Vijay
GOAT Movie Review: Vijay’s The Greatest of All Time is effectively shouldered by an in-form superstar, but crumbles under the pressure of having an old school template one-liner that is heavily reliant on a singular idea.
In a crucial GOAT Movie scene set in Thailand, Gandhi (Vijay) comes to terms with a huge loss. The staging isn’t flashy. The camera isn’t trying too hard to register the impact. The music isn’t tugging at your heartstrings. It is a rather straightforward scene, and all that Venkat Prabhu and Co had to do was allow Vijay to take over the scene.
In that moment, Vijay puts down the baggage of having to behave like a superstar and simply plays a father. A father who is at a loss. He has a raging breakdown that ends with tears and wails. Gandhi is forced to go through similar motions in front of his wife Anu (Sneha), and this time, the breakdown is internal and even more convincing. It is impressive how Vijay turns into a different beast when he is cornered, rattled, and vulnerable.
In GOAT or The Greatest of All Time, Venkat Prabhu constantly taps into the non-starry Vijay, and the film comes together quite cohesively whenever this happens. But GOAT crumbles under the pressure of having an old-school template one-liner that is heavily reliant on the core idea of a de-aged Vijay acting alongside today’s Vijay. And there is only so much an interesting gimmick can do for you.
GOAT Review: Venkat Prabhu’s film wonderfully champions Vijay
GOAT starts by establishing the makers’ love for the Mission Impossible series. They don’t hide their inspiration, and there is no need either. The scene soon shifts to a four-member Anti Terrorism Squad team Sunil (Prashanth), Ajay (Ajmal), Kalyan (Prabhu Deva), and Gandhi led by Naseer (Jayaram). They go about saving the world without breaking a sweat. It is their domestic issues that challenge them more.
Taking a leaf out of The Family Man playbook, we see Anu and Gandhi face marital problems, and these portions lend themselves to hilarious moments. With experienced actors playing these parts, it is easy to believe they have a shared history.
But then, we are so used to watching espionage films that we are waiting for the backstabbing to happen points to Venkat Prabhu for subverting the expectations with some smart writing where he seemingly gives everything away and yet manages to pull off a surprising turn here, and an intriguing twist there.
GOAT Review:
In many ways, this is Venkat Prabhu’s boldest film after Mankatha not just in terms of the content, but the technical know-how too. Using the de-aging technique, Venkat replaces the need for the audience to suspend their disbelief with the need for the audience to believe in the power of visual effects. But this is a hard ask.
De-aging doesn’t pose a problem because the makers effectively showcase Jeevan (a younger Vijay), who doesn’t look out of place. VFX does more disservice in the case of a few other visual choices than its template narrative structure.
Take, for instance, the other de-aged Vijay, who is shown to be in his teens. It immediately distances the audience from all the good work done so far.
The same happens with the hurried action sequences that never allow us to soak in the urgency. Cars are zooming, bikes are skidding, and bullets are ricocheting, but it doesn’t give us the feel of being right in the middle of the action. There is so much visual chaos and it doesn’t work in the favour of GOAT Movie.
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Vijay’s Movie god, bad or greatest.
But what truly works for the film is the Old Guard standing tall. Be it Prashanth, Sneha, Prabhu Deva, Laila, and of course, Vijay, everyone brings their A-game.
Even relative newcomer Meenakshi Chaudhary gets a decent role, and she does justice to a character who is just an arm candy most of the time and becomes efficiently vulnerable at the right moment.
Each of the peripheral characters provides functional support for the star in the driver’s seat, but the writing squeezes in a scene or two that has emotional heft for them as individuals.
But this detailing also cramps up the narrative to leave us with a sense of exhaustion till the film finally picks up steam towards the end of the first half.
Vijay has so much fun playing Jeevan, and it once again shows what our superstars can do if they let down that baggage of being a superstar. Of course, Vijay does what he does best and has done for ages in the role of Gandhi, but as Jeevan, he is truly unhinged.
It is quite a radical choice of character in his penultimate film before he hangs up his acting boots for good. You wish he had taken this turn even earlier.
Of course, there are references to his political entry in GOAT. But these are a hit-and-miss mostly. The same happens with Venkat Prabhu’s decision to milk nostalgia to garner those easy whistles and cheers.
In today’s climate of instant gratification, one can’t blame the filmmaker for milking nostalgia, and appeasing various fandoms in the audience.
There are multiple hat tips to many contemporaries of Vijay. Some cameos and references are more useful as metaphors rather than narrative devices.
There is the now-compulsory Yogi Babu cameo that brings in the laughs but ends up overstaying its welcome. The entire last act is set in a CSK vs MI match, and there are enough scenes that would send the crowds into raptures. Known for his twist-a-minute kind of screenplay, it is in this last act that Venkat Prabhu truly comes into his own. He cracks the right mix of intrigue, suspense, humor, sentiment, and mass masala.
Till then, he plays it too subtly and allows a lot of things to meander, which is a far cry from his style of filmmaking.
There is no doubt that GOAT Movie is indeed a celebration of all things Vijay.
His dancing, action sequences, comic timing, vulnerability, romantic charm, and effortless superstardom are all stuff of dreams. A dream that is slowly moving away from the audience.
Probably why Venkat Prabhu does things that he might not have done if the film wasn’t weighed down by this added burden. We know we are in for the last phase of this journey with one of our greatest superstars, and even if the film falls quite a bit away from the target of being the greatest of all time, it’s okay, because now we are down to just one more.
In my opinion, The Goat Movie is very good, The fight sequences are on point, very Good use of VFX, and The cast was also very good, The Song and Overall Goat Movie are good I will give it a 5/ 4 rating.