2007 - The Bottom 10

Let's get the bad out of the way first. Here in reverse order - best of the worst to worst of the worst - are my choices for the 10 worst Tamil movies of 2007...

10. Thavam
This one actually started off differently - even if it did remind us of Punnagai Mannan's opening scene - with Arunkumar and Vandana deciding to die but ending up starting a new life together. But it then piled on coincidences in the name of plot points before turning into another familiar and cliched Kaadhal Koattai clone as it made the hero and heroine look for each other while another girl pined for the hero.

9. Thiru Ranga
This film had some of the most atrocious plot points of the year as a rowdy convinced his friends he was a software engineer and a producer kidnapped a popular actress. The uncharismatic lead pair proved to be incapable of making us overlook the plot points.

8. Urchaagam
Satham Podaathey was a weak thriller and this film ended up looking like Satham Podaathey without the popular stars or great music. The little chance the movie had of engaging us with its thriller theme was killed by the ridiculous screenplay in the second half as gaping holes in logic marked almost every scene and every narrative turn raised a large number of questions that the movie never attempted to answer.

7. Sabari
Every year finds atleast one Vijayakanth film on this list and this year, that dubious honor went to this film, where he played a doctor. Episodic in nature and unsubtle about putting forward his political views and policies, the film atleast proceeded linearly upto a point. But when new characters were introduced, new tracks popped up and both these led to several
unnecessary deaths and an escalation of gore and violence, the movie, that was bad to begin with, became essentially intolerable.

6. Thirumagan
This film's biggest surprise was that S.J.Suryah was not its biggest liability. He was his usual, hamming self but the film's weak story, its huge cast of characters(who simply hung around waiting for the key plot development late in the movie) and the unnecessary sleaze and vulgarity were bigger culprits.

5. Parattai Engira Azhagu Sundaram
A remake of the Kannada hit, this movie gave 'manipulative sentiments' a whole new meaning. It developed the Kaadhal Koattai storyline(two people looking for each other with lots of near-misses and close calls) between a mother and her son and after a particular plot point, the sentiments became downright tasteless. That, coupled with the listless violence and lack of romance, made the film a disaster.

4. Vegam
A shoddy romance started off this film, which eventually proceeded to shamelessly rip off Cellular as the action moved to Malaysia. S.Ve.Sekhar's son was too plumpy to handle the action hero role and the movie did nothing to make him more tolerable.

3. Thullal
With S.J.Suryah as his role model, director Pravinkanth turned hero in this sleazefest. Banking solely on sex and vulgarity, he fashioned a film that came off as egotistic, cheap and completely distasteful while posing as though it had a message to convey.

2. Vyaabaari
The sci-fi aspects of this film that dealt with cloning were laughable but it was Suryah's irritating performance, combined with lack of logic, abundant sleaze and artificial, misplaced sentiments that made it a truly dreadful motion picture. Suryah's personal motto - and punchline - in the film was 100% Vyaabaari but 100% torture was more like it.

1. Veerasamy
The worst movie in quite a few years, this one was a collage of everything that is wrong with Tamil cinema today with its horrendous acting, bad dialogs, regressive themes, distasteful romance, unfunny comedy, unbelievable stunts and vulgar song sequences. The only positive aspect of the film was that with T.Rajendar both before and behind the camera, it was easy to pinpoint the blame for the two and a half hours of torture inflicted on us.