The press release for Nagalingam announced that it was going to be the first 'movie with fragrance'. The plan was to make the audience smell the fragrance of whatever was on screen. So the viewers would be able to smell roses when there were roses on screen, camphor when an 'aarthi' was being done, etc. The idea was that this would make the viewer go to the theater and thus overcome the threat of video and cable. Though I saw the movie only on video, I don't think any of those pleasant fragrances would have helped overcome the stink emanating from such a bad movie.

Nagalingam could very well be an example of everything that could be badly handled in a movie. But the one positive aspect of Nagalingam is that it is easy to pinpoint the blame for this sorry excuse for a movie. Babu Ganesh, apart from acting(and I am using that term in the loosest sense here!) as hero, is responsible for the story, screenplay, dialog, music and direction. Rama Narayanan, who was behind movies like Rajakali Amman, owes a lot to Babu Ganesh and his movie since beside Nagalingam, even Rama Narayanan's movies begin to look like classics!

The movie starts off by showing in negative, some events which lead to a baby being abandoned near a temple(the movie might have been better off if it had followed this strategy of using the negative for the entire movie!). The temple's resident snake, which must have undergone a course in pediatry, takes care of the baby by clothing and feeding it. The baby ofcourse, grows up to be Nagalingam(Babu Ganesh). A background voice tells us a story of a family which came under the curse of snakes by selling snake skin and the snakes then took revenge by destroying the family. The daughter of the family Priya(Ravali), who was sent abroad to escape the wrath of the snakes, is back now and falls in love with Nagalingam. But a Nagakanni(Neena) is also in love with Nagalingam, who tells her off by swearing undying love to Priya. Raja(Prithviraj), who has eyes on both Priya and her wealth, then tries to harm Babu.

This is easily the most incoherent tamil movie I have seen in a long while. It beats out Time for this dubious honor. I had a hard time trying to figure out what was happening most of the time. The hero is shown as a baby abandoned because his family was killed by villains but is later supposed to be a snake cursed with life as a human being. But he is still able to change shape and is never harmed. The voice over states that Ravali's entire family was killed and she was sent abroad for protection by her relatives but her mother is still alive and well. Confusions like this abound in the movie.

The poor special effects and laughably bad performances dominate the crimes on the viewer's senses. The incredulity of the sequences where the snake feeds the baby or two snakes fight with each other and one burns(yes, burns!) the body of the other are not minimised by the cheesy special effects. The quick shots of demonic faces and the deity(K.R.Vijaya) look suspiciously like they have been clipped out of older movies. And I've seen better scenes of morphing in television serials.

If we watch the movie disregarding such deficiencies in story and screenplay, it does works as a comedy, though that was probably not the effect the director intended. Babu Ganesh shakes his tongue each time before he exhibits snake characteristics and the effect is hilarious. And there is a scene where his sidekick indulges in a 'snake dance' before being changed into a dog(!) that had me laughing so hard that I had tears streaming out of my eyes. Every one of the actors, very few of whom are recognizable, is completely over the top. Neena and Ravali, who have been in a lot better movies, are especially pathetic. All songs remind one of older songs.