R Ravikumar’s ‘Ayalaan’ is too generic to make an impact, but it is a harmless watch

The film stars Sivakarthikeyan and Rakul Preet Singh. The visual effects are very good, and make you wish the writing, too, was up to that level.

In an early scene in Ayalaan, from director R Ravikumar, the hero Tamizh (Sivakarthikeyan) saves a baby elephant that has fallen into a pit – but not before delivering a small lecture about how we have made the lives of elephants difficult by usurping their land and installing electric fences and so on. A little later, an impressively CG-ed alien lands on earth and reads up about humans – but also about the waste we leave behind, like polythene bags that take centuries to degrade. In a recent interview with Galatta Plus, the director spoke thoughtfully and eloquently about what he called the “Tamizh genre”. He was right. Despite the sci-fi premise, Ayalaan is Agmark Tamil cinema. It has mini-lectures. It has mini-messages, like how we are so glued to our phones that we would not notice an alien even if it landed in our midst. It has an eco-warrior hero against a corporate villain. You could say the alien is almost an afterthought.

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