Not all OTT releases have great standards—or even good levels. Not every Netflix-released film has an assurance of quality. And Test is the latest example of this axiom! I watched this originally Tamil film in Hindi.
Test is testing—it really examines our patience level, not just with its crawling length but also the intelligence of its plot. And I wonder how many will pass the test of completely sitting through this overlong display of puerile drama and superficial emotions. We film reviewers sadly do not have that enviable luxury of quitting midway!!
If there is any saving grace at all, it is the sagacious performance of the redoubtable R. Madhavan. In a quirky and contradictory character, the actor grabs the opportunity to deliver a whammy of a performance that indicates yet again his consummate artistry. I have very little doubt that he has grabbed this role only because he saw another chance to explore the artiste within him!
For the film is shaky from beginning to end, and the USP of the film seems to be people slapping each other—I think the score must be around ten times. The music is atrocious, the lyrics doubly so, and there is small consolation from the fact that the cricket sequences are well-shot and edited. For the rest of the film, the editor sems to have invested in a long working holiday, for when we see that an hour is yet left to go, and about 20 minutes then seem to pass, we find that there are now 53 minutes left and we have watched the film for a mere 7 minutes that seem like 20!
Arjun (Siddharth in a half-based role) plays a cricketer who seems to be losing his form. He is thus dependent on one crucial India-Pakistan test match to show that he still has it in him. His moppet son admires him but Arjun barely indulges the poor child. Arjun’s wife (Meera Jasmine) is patient, long-suffering and thinks that her son is more important than cricket or her husband’s izzat. She is right, of course, but Arjun’s priorities, based on his dead father-in-law’s remark, are woefully different.
We then have Saravanan (R. Madhavan), a disgruntled scientist, who wants global fame as he has a solid idea to reduce the world’s Carbon Footprint by generating fuel from water (Fukrey 3, anyone?). But he is failing each time, and his wife, Kumudha (Nayanthara) chastises him and yet in a supreme display of confused love, adores him too and showers him with her late father’s money to run a canteen and later even sell her late father’s property. She has one burning ambition: to become a mother, which her gynecologist has said will be now her “last chance” with IVF.
A schoolteacher, she is close to Arjun’s son, providing the very superficial emotional angle. Fed up to the gills with his wife’s admonitions, Saravanan slaps her, which makes her fall unconscious and get a cut on her face (which she resolutely does not treat!), and as Arjun has slapped his son the same day and he has revealed to his teacher that he will never return home, the boy is with Kumudha that night.
Of course, in the interests of dragging the film to needless convolutions, Kumudha has never informed his mother that her son is under her care (she isn’t a mother yet, see? And she will thus have no idea that his mother will be frantic with worry!). And so when she falls unconscious, Mr. Scientist has a diabolically bright idea to correct the fact that he is strapped for money. This is as much to pay back his creditors as well as for the IVF, and so he decides to lock the kid in, gag and tie him to the bed and ask Arjun, who has shown customary form on Day 1 of the test match, to play and lose in the coming days, if he wants his kid back. In the whole imbroglio, which actually amounts to match-fixing, Saravanan’s creditors can earn loads, and Saravanan will not only get money but his loan will also be wiped off.
In turn, Arjun decides that his son is more important, informs his wife too late that he has been receiving a call from a kidnapper, and yet still plays the crucial move that wins India the match against seemingly unsurmountable odds. He weeps on the ground, knowing that he might have lost his son forever.
But before, during and after this mess, various things have happened or happen that finally lead to a “happy” ending for Arjun and his family. For Kumudha and Saravanan, it’s another story. Oh! And before I forget, the police are on the track of the people to whom Saravanan owes money as they have tapped phones. And that’s another quarter-baked angle.
To sum up, the “film” fails every test: it is no crime saga, nothing remotely like a family drama, not a sports-based film (except in the loosest sense of the term) and certainly not an entertaining watch.
Nayanthara generally irritates, Siddharth seems more helpless as an actor than as his character, and Meera Jasmine could take—sorry to say this!—acting lessons. There is this man (Shyam Kumar), who looks like a poor cross between Madhavan himself and Anil Kapoor and is supposed to be a sharp cop. Like the rest of the cast, he too goes through the mundane motions.
Apologies for the long review as the film does not deserve it, but I would term this an analysis! Wonder what Netflix was thinking when they accepted this mess. After some classic fare like Dhoom Dhaam and the likes, this one’s pathetic. Guess the OTT platform (which has improved by leagues content-wise in the past 18 months or so) must have asked “YNot?” (See Below!)
Rating: *1/2
Netflix presents YNot Studios’ Test Produced by: Chakravarthy, Ramachandra & S. Sashikanth Directed by: S. Sashikanth Written by: S. Sashikanth & Suman Kumar Music: Shaktishree Gopalan Starring: R. Madhavan, Siddharth, Nayanthara, Meera Jasmine, Lirish Rahav, Kaali Venkat, Aadukalam Murugadoss, Nassar, Mohan Raman, Vinay Varma, Shyam Kumar, Denver Antony Nicholas & others
