Aavni, action, comedy, Gajaraj, Harish, India, Jayaram, Joju George, Karthik Subbaraj, movies, Nithish, Nithran Sai, Pooja Hegde, Retro, reviews, Sanjay, Sujith Shankar, Suriya, Thirshiv
May 3, 2025
by Carla Hay
Directed by Karthik Subbaraj
Telugu with subtitles
Culture Representation: Taking place in India, from the 1960s to 1998, the action film “Retro” features a predominantly Indian cast of characters (with some white people and some black people) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: An aggressive thug has conflicts with his lady love, who wants him to give up his criminal lifestyle, and he gets an early release from prison so that he can infiltrate a “fight club” cult on a remote island, where he impersonates a comedy therapist.
Culture Audience: “Retro” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and don’t mind watching movies that are too long and too stupid.
A complete tonal mess, “Retro” can’t decide if it wants to be a brutal action film or a wacky lighthearted comedy. It’s a strange and idiotic story about a gloomy thug who has to learn how to laugh. Song-and-dance numbers are awkwardly thrown into the mix.
Written and directed by Karthik Subbaraj, “Retro” has too much going on and yet none of it is meaningful or makes any sense. And to make matters worse, this wretched movie has an overly indulgent 168-minute runtime. If you watch this abomination from beginning to end, you might never get back that precious time and valuable brain cells.
“Retro” (which takes place in India) begins in the city of Mudarai, in the 1960s, when an orphan named Paarivel “Paari” Kannan is adopted as a baby by Sandhya (played by Swasika), the wife of a ruthless gangster named Thilagan (played by Joju George), who wants nothing to do with raising this child. The movie’s cast members who have the role of Paari are Nithran Sai as pre-teen Paari, Harish as teenage Paari, and Suriya as adult Paari. For reasons that are not explained in the movie, Paari finds it difficult to smile, so a big part of the plot is about his lady love and other people trying to get him to smile.
Sandhya dies when Paari is a teenager. Her dying wish was for Paari to learn how to smile. During the funeral, Paari saves Thilagan from an attack. As a result, Thilagan begins to respect Paari and starts grooming him to become part of Thilagan’s criminal activities. As a teenager, Paari meets and falls in love with Rukimini “Rukku” Paari (played by Aavni), who will become his future wife.
Thilagan remarries in 1989. He and his second wife have three biological sons (played by Nithish, Thirshiv and Sanjay), while adult Paari has followed Thilagan into the criminal lifestyle. In 1993, Paari reconnects with his sweetheart Rukmini (played by Pooja Hegde), who is now a veterinarian, and he asks her to marry him. Rukmini says she will only marry Paari if he leaves behind his life of crime and becomes a upstanding, law-abiding person.
Paari agrees to this ultimatum and gets the blessing of Rukmini’s widowed father (played by Singampuli) to marry Rukmini. The wedding ceremony of Paari and Rukmini is a joyous celebration—except that Rukmini and her father are uncomfortable that Thilagan has shown up with his gangster cronies, after Thilagan was explicitky told not to bring his criminal associates to the wedding. Paari makes a profuse apology to Rukmini and promises that nothing will bad happen.
And that’s the moment when you know that something very bad is going to happen. At the wedding reception, Paari tells Thilagan that Paari no longer wants to be a criminal and that it was a “mistake” to get involved in criminal activities. Thilagan’s response is to slap Paari very hard and call him a “bloody orphan.” As if to prove that he’s done with his life of crime, Paari refuses to give information in an upcoming arms deal that has the code name Gold Fish.
Things get worse when Thilagan’s gangster cronies start attacking Paari, who fights back in self-defense with a machete. Thilagan tries to kill Rukmini, but Paari cuts off one of Thilagan’s lower right arm at the elbow By the end of this bloody brawl, a few of the gangsters are dead. Paari gets arrested. A horrified and disgusted Rukmini refuses to talk to Paari before he is hauled off to jail. She cuts off all contact with him.
Paari is convicted of murder and sentenced to prison, where one of the movie’s cheesy musical numbers takes place in a prison yard. While he’s in prison, Paari hears that Rukmini and her father have moved to another state in India. Five years pass while Paari is in prison. During those five years, he has heard that Rukmini’s father has died, and she is now working for a non-governmental organization.
The next plot development is when “Retro” starts to get bizarre and stupid: Paari is given an early release from prison because he’s being sent to a mysterious island, where he’s told he has to be involved in amateur fighting. It sounds too good to be true to Paari, but he takes the offer anyway because he understandably wants to get out of prison.
Meanwhile, Thilagan (who now uses a robotic prosthetic right arm) has ordered some of his goons to find Rukmini. Why? Because Thilagan is still angry that Paari quit the gangster lifestyle. Thilagan wants to use Rukmini as bait to convince Paari to go back to being a criminal. It’s a nonsensical plan that ends up being a subplot that goes nowhere.
Shortly after Paari has gotten out of prison, Paari meets Dr. Chaplin Lolly (played by Jayaram), who has the nickname the Laughing Therapist because Dr. Lolly does stand-up comedy as part of his “therapy sessions. Paari doesn’t remember Dr. Lolly at first. Dr. Lolly reminds Paari that they first met when Paari was in prison and Dr. Lolly did a stand-up comedy show for the prison inmates. When Dr. Lolly asked Paari why Paari wasn’t laughing during this comedy show, Paari told Dr. Lolly that he ever laughed it was during a part of his childhood that was too long ago to remember.
The movie takes a turn for the worse when Paari hires Dr. Lolly to go with Paari and some cohorts to Black Island, where they settle in at a place called Laughter Hospital. Paari pretends to be Dr. Lolly and does some terrible stand-up comedy for hospital patients, where Paari wears a red clown nose and a bowler hat. Paari tries to force himself to laugh during these shows. It’s as cringeworthy as it sounds.
And what a coincidence: Rukmini shows up at the hospital. She’s still a veterinarian, but she’s also now an anti-poaching activist because this island has a lot of wildlife that is being poached. The island is ruled by Lord Milton (played by Gajaraj) and his son Freddie Milton (played by Sujith Shankar), an animal abuser who sexually harasses Rukmini. And you know what that means: Paari is going to fight Freddie.
There’s also a moronic subplot about a cult on the island called the Rubber Cult, which has Rubber War games that area combination of gladiator style and mixed-martials arts, with the game participants wearing rubber suits. The opponents in these games are rich people versus enslaved poor people. The rich people wear black rubber suits. The poor people wear red rubber suits.
Paari is forced to be on the “underdog” poor people’s team. An egotistical lout named Michael Mirasu (played by Vidhu), who likes to call himself King Michael, is in charge of these games. The action scenes during the Rubber War games are unrealistic and an assault on viewers’ intelligence.
The acting in “Retro” is atrocious. The film editing is extremely sloppy. The screenplay and direction are beyond incompetent. All of this adds up to “Retro” being convoluted junk that is no fun to watch and should be avoided at all costs.
Prime Media released “Retro” in select U.S. cinemas on May 1, 2025, the same day that the movie was released in India.