Saba Nayagan review: A perfect Christmas watch

Director CS Karthikeyan’s Saba Nayagan is a light-hearted, feel-good entertainer, which keeps you laughing almost right till the end.

In fact, it is only at the end that you stop laughing.

This doesn’t mean the film has a sad ending. It is just that the climax justifies something which many would consider morally wrong. Other than that, the movie works.

Without much ado, let’s get to the synopsis:

Synopsis

Saba Nayagan, as the title suggests, is about Saba — a youngster whose official name is Aravind (Ashok Selvan).

A die-hard romantic at heart, Saba constantly keeps falling in love (and out of it).

Love first blossoms in Saba’s life when he is in school. He falls for a girl called Esha (Karthika Muralidharan) but is too scared to go and confess his feelings for her.

To make matters worse for him, he realises that several boys in his school are equally interested in proposing to her. By the time he musters enough courage to tell her, it is too late as school life ends.

Saba joins an engineering college and falls in love again. This time, it is with Riya (Chandini Chowdary), a girl from a neighbouring branch of engineering.

Initially, she pretends to be uninterested but then falls for him after learning that Saba is already close to her younger brother and dad.

Life goes on well for some time. It is then that Saba introduces another friend of his to Riya. But little does he know then that his friend will backstab him. He does exactly that and Riya ditches Saba for his friend.

When Saba completes his under graduation, he is in two minds as to whether he should go for higher studies or work. It is at this point that a pleasant unexpected development takes place in Saba’s life.

He visits his sister at her boutique where he bumps into his first crush Esha. What happens then is what Saba Nayagan is all about.

Analysis

For the most part, Saba Nayagan makes you break into laughter. The jokes multiply when Saba finishes college, especially the sequences that follow the scene where he lies to his romantic interest about his friend being a doctor are just hilarious.

Karthikeyan can engagingly narrate a script and he proves it with Saba Nayagan. The story is told intelligently. For instance, each time Saba narrates a love episode gone sour, he only narrates how he first met his sweetheart and how they ended up loving each other.

The break-up part is often left untold with Saba moving on to the next love story in his life.

When a policeman asks him about the ending, he says, “Don’t you know automatically that it didn’t work out when I move on to the next story?”

Throughout, the humour keeps the film engaging. Ashok Selvan is natural in handling humour and does a fantastic job of Saba’s character.

Megha Akash, who appears for only a brief while, steals the show.

Karthiga Muralidharan and Chandini Chowdary do justice to their parts.

Saba Nayagan has three cinematographers and all three seem to have understood the mood and tone of the film. As a result, all the visuals are so equally good that you find it hard to believe that three cinematographers have shot various portions of the film. In other words, it looks like the work of a single person.

The film’s second biggest strength after humour is its music. Leon James again proves what an immensely talented music director he is with this film.

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Final take

In all, Saba Nayagan is a feel-good entertainer and is a perfect gift for the Christmas weekend. It is exactly that kind of film that can usher in cheer, without boring you with pain and breakups.

(Views expressed here are personal.)