'Karuppu' Movie Review: Suriya Perspires as RJ Balaji Aspires To Make His Shankar Film  

Something about Karuppu tells me that something changed within RJ Balaji when he watched the first 20 minutes of Atlee’s Jawan. It’s the larger-than-life portion of the film in which a bandaged, mummified SRK emerges out of flames to reveal himself as God, nonetheless to a village that’s in desperate need of a saviour. GV Vishnu, who shot Jawan and Karuppu, has worked overtime to see if he can extend this vision through a full-length feature movie. Along with RJ Balaji and his team of writers, they’ve cracked open an idea that must have begun with this question: what if we transplant the mythical powers of a folk deity onto a modern-day superhero and see where it goes? 

The result is a mixed bag so full of clever ideas that it’s easier to admire them from a distance rather than feel absorbed by how far-fetched it is. Set in modern-day Chennai, almost entirely within the walls of a magistrate court, Karuppu isn’t too far away from the genetic pool of RJ Balaji’s own Mookuthi Amman (2020). Like this Nayanthara movie, RJ Balaji seems obsessed with the idea of making another Saamy Padam (religious movie), just so we get another divine intervention to solve the issues of a particular system. If Mookuthi Amman (borrowing from PK) spoke about the scams of Godmen and their quasi-religious organisations, Karuppu invokes another God to expose the scams within India’s judiciary. 

It’s a film that begins promisingly, with most of the first half spent explaining the many dealings that make this courthouse corrupt. We see RJ Balaji playing a crooked lawyer named Baby who has cooked the entire system. Two simpletons walk into this court expecting justice, and it requires the intervention of a God to make matters move. Despite all the time the film spends early on to set the rules of this fantastical world, we see the film working just as hard to undo the workings of this premise. Take, for instance, the perfectly plausible interpretation of Suriya’s mega monochromatic entry as Karuppan. We’re told that Baby has consumed a psychedelic, and we see Karuppan reveal himself to Baby during his hallucination. These images are dreamlike, and we see the film take the imagery of an anime to plant this Godlike entry. And yet, a scene later, there’s absolutely nothing magical about the manner in which Preeti (Trisha) can see Karuppan perform his Godly duties like it’s no big deal.

Sillier still is the promise Karuppan is required to make, only for the plot to move further. Baby insists that Karuppan is not allowed to make use of his powers to directly clean up the system. Just two scenes after this agreement, we see Karuppan forget the rule to descend on this courtroom with all his might. It’s as though the makers realised that a small-town lawyer is of no match for a man who presents himself as God and then went backwards to create odd-sounding weaknesses for this character. It forces us to believe that Karuppan’s powers are limited to a particular area, a lot like the network of a mobile phone service provider. We’re also made to believe in grand sub-plots which involves relocation of an entire courthouse, just so the lawyers and judges can escape the powers of Karuppan. 

And then, as we move into the second half, we notice the film abandons its primary narrative thread to talk about the most generic of cases. This has to do with a lady fighting a case against her powerful employer after she’s been sexually harassed. For a case that required real seriousness, we see the film play it out like another opportunity for Karuppan to save the day. For a film that wanted to solve the issues of the judiciary by employing the tools that are available to any common man, it quickly goes berserk as it makes Karuppan operate like any other vigilante. Just when a new crime is committed, we see Karuppan arrive from the heavens, just so he can deliver a punch line. Just when a set of bad guys chase Trisha, Karuppan arrives with a massive sword to slice an SUV into two, just because he can.

What makes the second half lose its edge further is when the film throws pop-culture references at you, one after another. An elaborate sequence tries to spoof the action scene from Leo without any impact, and you also see Suriya perspiring as he references his own older films. A court scene is right out of Jim Carrey’s Liar Liar, and then we get ringtones and songs from films that are supposed to make you feel something. By this point, the novel idea of marrying mythology with mass has become so unrecognisable that it begins to feel like we’re watching a post-Enthiran Shankar movie, without the bigness.

And if the film remains somewhat watchable, it is only because it works reasonably well as a children’s movie. There’s a cartoon-like abandon with which certain images have been created, and the idea is to make one feel amusement more than anything else. None of this sticks as a single uniform story, but it has a folktale-like quality when you think of it as a moral tale told to instil fear of god in children. GK Vishnu’s wild reds give you a psychedelic feeling of having seen God up close, and this is only magnified by Sai Abhyankkar’s ear-numbing score. And although most of its ideas do not come together, at least Karuppu feels like a film that tries hard to create a new-age version of an age-old idea. Despite the many WTF moments, it’s a film that sneaks in an OMG or two, just for Suriya.