Vimaana Thittam

Flightplan was fantastic – even as I watched the Tamil translation of it.

The infamous SunTV regularly shows Hollywood movies dubbed fully in Tamil, but it’s not the slack kind where you still hear the original language, mind you – the background sounds, effects, scores are all intact in these Tamil versions. Only the voice track is professionally replaced with the Tamil voice actors'.

And these actors are veterans in their own right – they provide dubbing voices for Tamil actors in Tamil movies! That’s right – unlike in Hollywood where Peirce Brosnan dubs his own voice for Pierce Brosnan, in Tamil movies, Muthu might dub for the popular actor Karuppu, simply because Karuppu is busy with other shoots and has no time for things like dubbing.

Anyway – the thing about Tamil translated movies is that the Tamil colloquial language is strangely adapted to the movie’s context. In Flightplan, the lip-syncing is fabulous, to even the grunts and so on. I have a strong feeling the voice actors really enjoy themselves when they do a doofy, stupid voice for, say, a fat dude.

There was once they showed Shanghai Noon, and man, Owen Wilson and Jackie Chan were rip-roaring hilarious in working-class Madrasi accent.

No wonder Hollywood movies are popular – many blockbuster movies are dubbed in Tamil, because the masses understand them.

Now… I wonder how Hancock will be translated…