Middling family drama with manufactured conflicts

Brother begins by showing us how Karthik, a law school dropout, who cannot tolerate irresponsible behaviour, goes on to start a fight with anyone and everyone. As the tradition of Tamil cinema has it, every unruly brother can be fettered only by his dotting elder sister.

Enter Anandhi (Bhumika Chawla), Karthik’s sister, who promises her parents to make her brother a better person, and takes him to her house in Ooty. How Karthik brings chaos into the lives of Anandhi and her husband Aravind (Natty), forms the rest of the story.

A protagonist who makes light of serious situations is director Rajesh M’s forte. However, it seems he hasn’t been updating his humour to suit the changing sensibilities of the audience. Brother could have been a better film if Rajesh had stuck to the exploration of emotions instead of reverting to the no-longer-funny comedy routines.

Except for the brother-sister portions of Karthik and Anandhi, no other character feels like real people. What should have been soulful conversations turned out to be a recitation contest. In scenes involving Priyanka Mohan, it fails even to be that, as she punctuates at unnecessary places.

Her characterisation seems like it never crossed the first draft of the script. Extensive thought should have gone into how Karthik and Archana (Priyanka) get acquainted with each other. Making her Karthik’s sister-in-law seems like a convenient way to write romance.

Easy and casual writing even pervades the promising Karthik-Anandhi bond. Anandhi’s IFS husband Aravind and her in-laws are disciplinarians who can get pissed off for things as simple as a dinner delayed by ten minutes.

We wonder if they are really humans or walking clocks obsessed with time. Apart from punctuality, mixing English with Tamil is also believed to be a marker of sophistication in Tamil cinema. This trope too is employed in Brother beyond necessity.

Talented actors like Seetha, Achyuth Kumar and Saranya Ponvannan are wasted with underwritten roles. VTV Ganesh, like always, manages to land a few jokes with his peculiar voice or intonation—nothing more, nothing less. Where we would have loved to see more of Karthik and Anandhi, Rajesh goes back to his bad-boy bestie trope, preventing us from connecting with the story. Repulsion, not humour, stemmed out of these portions. Harris Jeyaraj, on his part, offers some respite with the catchy ‘Makkamishi’ and a poorly placed yet beautifully choreographed ‘Medhakudhu Kaalu Rendum.’