Mayirulla Mannutaiyan (aka Baaldaar kumhaar)

This is not a review. I have never read any of the Potter books. The reasons for that lie in the hazy area between personal lethargy (too much work ya) and supercilious arrogance (Terry Pratchett is better!).

I have, however, seen all the Potter movies. This is a movie spoiler. Well. It is actually a spoiled review of a movie that is, truth be told, better than I make it sound. Since I saw it with a pure, unpottered mind, all I could see were subtle references to many other things that most Potter fans might not have bothered to notice. This review is about all of those things.

After a satisfying dinner at The Noodle House, we walked into Sree theater, part of the Satyam Ultramegaloplex. Mr Potter seemed to have undergone a summer haircut (specifications – Rs. 20, full cuttings, no machine using please, show me the razor blade). He goes on to stun 2 dark looking suckers (called Dementors for some reason) with the cunning oration of cockney-accented Latin sounding phrases. He also sight-aducchufies (line maroes) a chinese girl and goes on to kiss her. I was expecting Hedwig the owl to come and block the scene at the crucial moment (ala sparrows in 1980s Tamil movies) but he did not. They showed flowers though.

Menwhile, the arch villian Whole-day-Mottai hatches a plot to read and control Potter’s memories using a device called the Eternal Sunshine of the Potter’s mind and even dispatches extras who flunked the Sith final exam and couldn’t make it to the Star Wars movies, to steal the prophecy from our hero.

Potter shows a lot of teenage angst and also almost writes poetry in the classroom and goes on to get scolded by his teacher who almost says “Poetry. This boy wants to be a Poet”. But they do go on to break a lot of bricks in the wall and sing,

We don’t need no education

We don’t need no wand control

No dark arts teachers in the classroom

Witches leave us kids alone…

Harry also keeps telling Dharmendra that he wants to go it alone, but he is constantly reminded by his friends that Yeh Dosti We Will not Chhodenge. Snape Thakur also teaches our hero how to fight the villian by giving us a flashback of his past tragedies.

The prophecy is finally revealed. It turns out to be “This town ain’t big enough for the both of us“. Whole day Mottai whispers to our hero from behind – “Come to the dark side Luke. Use the Force Luke.”, but Harry tells him that he is not Luke and the villian says – “Oh. Ok. See you in the next movie then. My bad”