''Maha Maha'' (Tamil: மகா மகா, English: Great Great) is a 2015 Indian Tamil

romantic thriller A romantic thriller is a narrative that involves elements of the romance and thriller genres. A good thriller provides entertainment by making viewers uncomfortable with moments of suspense, the heightened feeling of anxiety and fright. A thril ...

film written and directed by Mathivanan Sakthivel. The film stars Mathivanan Sakthivel and Melissa in the lead roles, while Indira,

Nizhalgal Ravi Ravichandran Samanna (born 16 April 1956), known professionally as Nizhalgal Ravi, is an Indian film, television and voice actor who works mainly in Tamil cinema. He has performed in Tamil, Malayalam and Telugu films and television series. He st ...

Anupama Kumar Anupama Prakash Kumar (born 4 December 1974) is an Indian actress and model. Having appeared in more than 300 commercials, she made her debut as an actress in the 2010 movie ''Ishqiya'' and went on to play supporting roles in Tamil language fil ...

and

Meera Krishnan Meera Krishnan (born 1968) is an Indian actress, who has appeared in Tamil-language films and television serials. She started her career as an announcer on the public broadcaster Doordarshan and later became a newsreader for Sun TV before act ...

play supporting roles. The film features music composed by Pavalar Shiva, and editing by

Suresh Urs Suresh Urs is an Indian film editor who works predominantly in the South Indian cinema. He has edited over 700 films and 40 documentaries and television shows. Urs is well known for his association with directors like Girish Karnad, Mani Ratnam ...

. The film was predominantly filmed in

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

with local Australian cast. The film released on 6 March 2015 in

Tamil Nadu Tamil Nadu (; , TN) is a States and union territories of India, state in southern India. It is the List of states and union territories of India by area, tenth largest Indian state by area and the List of states and union territories of India ...

, Australia and

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

Plot

The hero, Vijay (Mathivanan Sakthivel), relocates to Australia as a result of his job transfer. There he meets an Australian girl, Emily Anderson (Melissa), and falls in love. Meanwhile, the Australian police are in search of Emily, who has claimed to be missing for the past 10 days. Meantime, the police finds the dead body of Emily, who was killed and buried in Vijay's garden, and hence, Vijay is arrested. Emily's postmortem report says that she was murdered and was buried. Further, it shocks the police as they find that Vijay had actually arrived at Australia a day after Emily's murder. As a result, Vijay is released by the police. Following which, Vijay is all set himself to find about Emily, that who was she actually, who would have murdered her and what would have been the reason behind it, how is it possible for a dead girl to meet and speak with him. Finally, all these investigations result to unfold many interesting and shocking informations.

Cast

*Mathivanan Sakthivel as Vijay Sankaran *Melissa as Emily Anderson *Indira as Anushri *

as Dr. Mohan *

as Aunty *

*Charmili as Sujatha *Tim Crowe as Drug Addict *Danny Elayoubi as John Watson *Marion Fernandez as Dr. Maya Charles *James Preston as Car Thief *Kim Richardson as Psychic *Sasitharan Sakthivel as Avi *Charlotte Wood as Emily's mother *Duncan Munro as Police officer *Nick Gottum as Emily's father

Release

The film released on 6 March 2015 in Tamil Nadu, Australia and England. The film was released along with 10 other films.

Production

The film is produced by Sakthi Screens and it was written and directed by Mathivanan Sakthivel. Mathivanan did a short course in film making at the Australian Film Base in Sydney before production of this film. The film was predominantly filmed in Australia in a small country town

Taralga Taralga is the traditional land of the Gundungurra people. Today it is a small village in the Southern Tablelands of New South Wales, Australia, in Upper Lachlan Shire. It is located at the intersection of the Goulburn-Oberon Road and the Lagga ...

Music

The film has three tracks composed by Pavalar Shiva, who is

Ilayaraja Ilaiyaraaja (born R. Gnanathesikan, 3 June 1943) is an Indian musician, composer, arranger, conductor, orchestrator, instrumentalist, lyricist and singer, popular for his works in Indian Cinema, prominently in Tamil films. Reputed to be one of ...

's brother's (Pavalar Varadarajan's) son. The audio was released by

. He commented that the songs are good and he liked the title of the film "Maha Maha".

The Hindu ''The Hindu'' is an Indian English-language daily newspaper owned by The Hindu Group, headquartered in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. It began as a weekly in 1878 and became a daily in 1889. It is one of the Indian newspapers of record and the secon ...

reported that there are only three tracks in the album, all of which are pleasing to the ears. ‘Ennavo Pannuthe’ is sung by Nivas K. Prasanna and

Prashanthini Prashanthini is an Indian playback singer, singing predominantly in Tamil. She is the daughter of Malaysia Vasudevan and the sister of Yugendran. Career Prashanthini first began her playback career with Harris Jayaraj for the movie '' 12B''. H ...

, while ‘Agaramodu Lagaram’ is sung by Prashanthini, Priya and Vallavan. Pavalar Siva's rendition of the title number ‘Maha Maha’ is good.

Critical reception

Vannathirai Magazine review said that the movie does not have much commercial element, however the director has done a fast pace screenplay for which he needs to be congratulated.

Maalai Malar ''Maalai Malar'' is a daily evening Tamil newspaper. It is owned by Daily Thanti group. It was founded by S. P. Adithanar in 1977 at Coimbatore. Maalai Malar has twelve editions published from Chennai, Vellore, Dindigul, Thanjavur, Tirunelve ...

review reported that Mathivanan has done what is required for his role and Melissa has fulfilled the job that is given to her. The review also praised the director for using the Australian actors properly. The review highlighted that the screen play is bit slow for a crime thriller. A critic from ''Nettv4u'' opined that "it is worth watching, with different story with new leads and known character artists. Maha Maha…. Mathivanan’s classy debut!"

Awards

Maha Maha won its first Award, the "Award of Recognition" from "The IndieFEST Film Awards" based in California, USA in July 2015.http://tamilstar.com/tamil/news-id-maga-maga-10-10-1523129.htm Maha Maha also won the "Award of Recognition" from "Accolade Global Film Competition" based in California, USA in August 2015.

Other-language versions

Maha Maha was dubbed as Saaya Ek Pyar Ka in Hindi. The Hindi version of the movie was released in April 2019. Maha Maha was dubbed as Moogamanasu Cheppindhi in Telugu. The Telugu version of the movie was released in January 2019.

References

External links

Maha Maha
* * * * {{YouTube, eWiRHfbj5u0, ''Maha Maha Telugu Version Moogamanasu Cheppindhi Full movie'' 2015 films Indian thriller drama films Tamil-language psychological thriller films 2015 psychological thriller films Indian multilingual films 2015 romantic drama films Indian romantic drama films Films shot in Australia Films shot in Sydney Films shot in Chennai