Like its protagonist Sathya (Vidhu), 29, the film too seems to be suffering from an identity crisis. For 29-year-old Sathya, he’s exactly at that age where he’s starting to realise that he’s made nothing of himself. At times, we see him dressed to play the part of an accountant in a Chennai startup. A scene or two later, we see him working as a server for a catering company. Then we see him dressed as a shopping centre mascot, and through all these costumes, we hear Sathya’s voiceovers asking out loud who he really is.
As for the film 29, the identity crisis feels even more severe. It begins like a light comedy about a bunch of directionless bachelors, trying to make it in a big city. A little later, Sathya falls madly in love with Viji (Preethi Asrani), transforming the film from a comedy to a ridiculously self-serious romance. For the most part, the genre of the movie itself feels like it’s being decided based on Viji’s moods. When she’s pleasant and supportive towards Sathya’s lack of ambition, 29 appears to be a movie about a woman who doesn’t need much from her man. As it progresses, just when the film feels like it has nowhere to go, it becomes Viji’s turn to nurse an identity crisis. From a manic pixie dream girl, she quickly turns into a self-motivated, studious type who wants to do great things for society.
Stuck somewhere in between these two confused protagonists is a film that becomes even more confused. It’s as though their personal equation keeps shifting, but with the only intention of moving the screenplay forward. A couple that seemed perfectly functional and cordial reveal cracks in their relationship, not because we see a mix of external and internal conflicts getting to them. Oftentimes, the only reason people in 29 behave a certain way is to needlessly remain unpredictable.
This may have been wonderful in a film with better writing. But with the character inconsistencies in both Sathya and Viji, they stop behaving like real, regular people, abandoning all sense of reality to act like they are the main characters of a film that feels implausible. So when Sathya makes another shift in his personality (after he grows his hair and his beard to suit the part) to turn into a full-fledged environmental activist, the film becomes a comedy again, but not by design.
The philosophical dialogues and the predictable tying of loose ends only make the film impossible to engage with. It becomes even harder to spend more time with both Viji and Sathya; so when the film ends with what is supposed to be a happy ending, we can’t help but decide who to feel bad for between Viji and Sathya. For how desperately unlikeable they go on to become, perhaps the idea of the film is to tell us that they both deserve each other, and live unhappily ever after.