Sixer movie review: Vaibhav-starrer tries hard to be funny but marginally falls short

One of the most difficult things in commercial cinema is to make comedy films work with the audiences. Director Chachi’s Sixer with Vaibhav in the lead tries hard to make us laugh, but falls short marginally. However some of the gags which may look silly may bring a smile on your face. In Tamil cinema there would usually be a separate track for comedy scenes, untill recently, when the hero himself turned comedian. Our hero Aadhi (Vaibhav) is a successful civil engineer but has a peculiar problem; he has nyctalopia or turns blind after 6 PM. His night blindness is a source of constant worry for his loving parents as they feel that nobody will marry him. Aadhi returns home every day before the clock strikes 6 in the evening, and depends on his best friend (Satish) to bail him out of difficult situations. [caption id=“attachment_7255771” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Vaibhav in Sixer. Screen grab from Youtube.[/caption] One day he is caught up in the middle of an agitation by some protestors who are fighting a politician caught in a sex scandal. And without realising that he is in the midst of agitators he vows loudly - “We won’t give up. Not until we die.” The agitators take this cue as they become aggressive and he is made to look like a hero by Krithika (Pallak Lalwani) the anchor of a news channel. Later when he sees her in daylight Aadhi flips for her as she builds him out to be a hero in the campaign against the politician. The rest of the 2 hours 21 minutes is how Aadhi hides his night blindness from Krithika and makes her fall for him. The character of Aadhi played by Vaibhav was etched out from the comedy track of Goundamani’s character ‘Cook Ganesan’ from the film Chinna Thambi. The character who suffers from night blindness was a raging hit with the audiences. Now Goundamani himself has sent a legal notice to the makers of Sixer saying that his image has been tarnished. However it is Aadhi and his night blindness that leads to hilarious situations in the film, making it a fun watch. Vaibhav has done a neat job and his scenes with Satish are hilarious, particularly the one with a ‘drunk’ Radha Ravi. The heroine Palak Lalwani does not get her lip sync right. And like in all Tamil films when the hero splits with the heroine, a bar song is thrust into the narration. There is a long drawn out crass homophobic scene in the film, which should have been avoided. The film’s problem is its run time and needs trimming. Sixer is a typical time-pass  movie that may provide some laughs for those nostalgic about 1980s Tamil cinema comedy tracks.