Watching Adhik Ravichandran’s ‘Good Bad Ugly’ is similar stuffing oneself with a series of ice-creams for appetizers, main course and desserts. While the sugar rush might be exceedingly thrilling, once it ends, it does lead to a sense of dizziness and irritability.
The filmmaker clearly doesn’t seem to care for coherent story-telling, emotional connection or even logical progression. He is only fixated on providing enough material for the fans to go berserk in the movie halls. And he mostly succeeds at it.
In some way, making ‘Good Bad Ugly’ might have been similar to writing a PhD. For they both cannot make a point without a dozen references. The film is filled with references from Ajith’s successful films, Vijay’s iconic dialogues, other actors’ earlier films, their personal lives, funny memes, Youtube sketches and trending Instagram reels. And this is then fused with a steady supply of popular songs of Ilayaraaja, Deva, Vidyasagar and others. Music director GV Prakash Kumar might be a generous individual – for allowing the film to have more songs of other musicians than his own. Am not fully sure if the film had any references to popular nursery rhymes. But again, in the ocean of references that the film is filled with, it is quite possible to miss a dozen or two. But don’t get me wrong. Am certainly not complaining about it. For these pop-culture references are the fun part of the film. At least, they remain fun for a while and then feel over-stretched.
The film is very aware of its own reckless and mindless nature – making it quite appealing. But what it lacks is wit and cleverness. A mindless sensory overload film like ‘Good Bad Ugly’ should have been more clever and filled with plenty of original wit. Similar to something we saw in Adhik Ravichandran’s earlier film ‘Mark Antony’. But the filmmaker doesn’t seem interested in any of that here. Which ironically makes ‘Good Bad Ugly’ both energetic and lazy at the same time. Because without doubt, it is an impressive feat that the film is able to sustain its high energy level for most of the running time – without quite losing us. But at the same time, it doesn’t want to be innovative. It succumbs to easy film references and reusing popular songs from the past to cover its weak writing and lack-lustrous moments. Which at times makes the film look like a hurriedly written episode of the popular Vijay TV show ‘Lollu Sabha’.
So the responsibility to entertain us fully falls on actor Ajith Kumar’s shoulders and he does a fairly impressive job. It is always a pleasure to watch the actor having fun on screen and in ‘Good Bad Ugly’, we are often reminded of how uninhibited a performer he was in Mankatha (2011). Even if he isn’t able to fully replicate the magic here. But compared to his several recent films, where he appeared uninterested and bored, to witness an engaging AK here was a happy relief.
Apart from Ajith Kumar, it was also enjoyable to watch Arjun Das’ unrestrained act. While his role opens with a lot of promise, the narrative soon dilutes him with a generic double role that it doesn’t know what to do with. The rest of the actors have very little to do expect wear colourful clothes or interesting hairdos. In particular, I felt mighty worried for the non-existent character that actor Prasanna was earnestly playing in the film.
The film unnecessarily forces itself to have an emotional father-son core, which the filmmaker himself doesn’t seem convinced about. These scenes come across as heavily jarring and act as regular speed-breakers to the otherwise mindless fun party unravelling on screen. One wonders why Adhik even bothered to write these unconvincing scenes, for the film could have worked better as a bank heist or even a purely gangster war film. That way, it could have not worried to create those emotionally superficial moments and just focused on the adrenaline rush.
‘Good Bad Ugly’ might not be a film for everyone. To reiterate the earlier mentioned sugar rush metaphor, for someone who has a strong sugar craving and is not diabetic, this can be a very fun watch. But if you are someone who prefers a balanced diet, the film can come across shockingly junk. Though Adhik Ravichandran should be congratulated for successfully demonstrating that a compilation of reels and references can indeed run as a feature length film. That said, my only serious complaint about the film would be that it didn’t have a reference to ‘Kadhal Kottai’ (1996) – my most favourite Ajith Kumar film.
