This GOAT Is A Sheepish Product

Yet another big-ticket film, this time in Tamil, shows that the most difficult movie to make is a star vehicle.

With a formula that's rigid and unchangeable, directors often find themselves stuck, with no room to manoeuvre.

Tamil star Vijay's The GOAT, which has arrived in theatres amid huge buzz, as it is supposed to be his penultimate venture before he takes up full-time politics, is more of the same offering, albeit with a seemingly fresh coat of paint.

It is like a typical wedding dinner menu. You have more of everything, but nothing stands out, as every aspect is marked for mass consumption. You feel sated but not satisfied.  

It is not as if director Venkat Prabhu has not tried. The problem is that he seems to have tried so much that it comes across as desperation. He is, in general, a director with smarts, and Vijay is no lazy actor. When such talents join forces, you expect an interesting output. That is not the case with The GOAT, at least not wholesomely. 

Assembly Line Product

The real problem with modern-day big star movies is the absolute lack of heart or emotions that you can relate to. It is all at the surface level; nothing goes deep. Perhaps it is the reality of this reels era.

Also, the gratuitous violence and never-ending killings are all borrowed from the dystopian gaming world, where there is no real room for actual sentiment. 

There is no real imagination at play. Take the big hits featuring stars in recent years: Vikram, Jawan, Jailer, and Leo. If you see past their flimsy façade, they are, for all practical purposes, the same film. A hero with a past (or a hero with a similar-looking dad), and he is forced to invoke his inner self to quell the villains from that past. The hero has to willy-nilly play a double role, at least notionally. It is all Baasha redux, in a sense.

Directors understand this lack of surprise in the story, and they try to address it through some typical left-field casting. So in The GOAT, you have the yesteryears hero Mohan as the villain.

On paper, it may have sounded like an extremely smart move, as it also satisfies an element of nostalgia. Mohan, after his golden run in the 1980s, was out of mainstream cinema for long.

But he neither has the acting gumption to come out on top as a baddie nor has the character been written in a manner to at least tide over his inadequacies.

The roles of Prashanth and Prabhu Deva too don't have the depth, and everything ends up a gimmick to create hype. 

So are the cameos from other stars and actresses (or even personalities from other popular fields), as they add nothing intrinsic to the film. They are just another heavy-handed stratagem to widen the base and appeal of the film.

To have an eye on the marketing side of the film is not wrong, but if that is what is going to dictate your entire approach to the film, it becomes an issue.

Also, the facile tendency to hark back on the star's previous offering and tap into some of that spirit was fun when it was novel. The director's, or actor's, cinematic universe now seems just an inefficient and lazy way to invoke their past glory. There is no real creativity at play.

Separating The GOAT From Others

As you can see, we have not gotten down to discussing The GOAT with too many specifics about its story or character. But it is only fitting to talk generically about the film that itself is a product of a generic approach. This is not to say that The GOAT has nothing redeemable.

But ironically, to review a film like The GOAT is also a challenge for critics. The film doesn't hide its agenda: It is a product packaged to please the star's legion of fans. So how do you analyse such an effort? Do you see it as a film that works for you? Or do you have to understand it for its unmistakable purpose?

The quandary is clearly seen in many reviews, as most of them, even if not too happy with the film, also underline the point that a 'movie made in service of a star's fans' cannot be all daringly different.

But it is also pertinent to point out that, in today's media reality, it is impossible to review a big star's movies for what they really are. The backlash from the fans as well as the marketing ecosystem can be disastrous (for the reviewers and their news outlets). So everyone kind of stretches themselves to at least pick a few nice things to bring up in the review.

But the vested interests know to take it up further and highlight these strenuously located positives, and that is how middling and often underwhelming movies like Jailer, Vikram, Jawan, and Leo end up as box-office successes. 

But since they become hits, future films tend to get made on those very prototypes. It is a double-helixed conundrum. It is a loop of no escape. 

The old truism is that if you celebrate mediocrity, you get more mediocrity. But if all of us are mediocre, there can be no real difference between sheep and goats.

The real worry though is: Does the difference really matter?