Sabhaapathy Review - Santhanam and MSBhaskar scores in this Entertainer!
Sabhaapathy (Santhanam) is a good-hearted man who frequently stammers. He has strong affections for his next-door neighbour, Savi (Preeti). Circumstances force him to become involved in a severe matter involving millions of rupees, and his life is turned upside down. The plot is around how he overcomes these obstacles and confesses his love for Savi.
Sabhaapathy is a film with a wicked sense of humour, to say the least. It ignores subjective considerations such as morality and political correctness in order to be wildly funny. And, for the most part, it succeeds when it attempts this. One of the film's funniest and most original sequences begins with a drunk santhanam ripping his father MS Bhaskar's baniyan and ends with him puking on MS Bhaskar's head.
Then there are some middle sections with the same 'wicked' comedy, but they don't work since the humour line appears to be erased and the jokes cross it. Sabhaapathy revealing his private parts to his father while a female teacher watches on is a nice example of such a scene. Such jokes were not appropriate. On the other side, there are several dramatic scenes that fall flat and fail to elicit empathy for Santhanam.
Finally, the sequences that set up santhanam and Preeti's romance feel removed from the audience, which reduces the involvement. The three types of scenarios stated above appear one after the other in no particular order, and this is Sabhaapathy's main flaw. Until the very end, the film is inconsistent. Santhanam, as well as Pugazh, are giving excellent performances. In the short area they had, the other actors did their best. Srinivasa Rao's writing is excellent. On TV, we frequently see father figures become enraged for no apparent reason. However, MS Bhaskar's character has a compelling backstory, which is consistent with the film's subject of inferiority feeling.
In the end, Sabhaapathy is one of Santhanam's better films as a leading man.