Primarily, this new location only contributes to making the film’s bi-lingual credential a little more believable. Unlike the recently released Michael, in Vaathi we’re willing to overlook lips sync issues and the strange landscape because the place itself is both in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. It doesn’t really explore either culture but at least it gives its conflict a universality because education is the same everywhere.
But it is the manner in which we arrive at foreseeable plot points that makes it hard to keep engaging with Vaathi. The school’s biology teacher (Samyuktha) falls for Balamurugan exactly at the moment in which he sorts out the school’s caste issue. The montages, including the part where weak students suddenly become experts, borrow images from films we’ve seen before. The lack of stronger characters that help Bala in his mission makes the film feel utterly generic, even when major events are taking place.
Of these, a particularly tiring stretch involves Bala walking back after he’s been attacked by local goons. It is a highly melodramatic sequence that is meant to show the pain Bala goes through in his efforts to keep teaching. But when the scene doubles up to show the impact he’s having on his students, we get a lofty stretch in which his weakest student comes to his aid to ensure his path becomes a little easier. It’s a scene written with sympathy as the only motive, yet it only repeats the same point we’ve already come to understand by then.
