The film is one-man show starring Vikram, but perhaps Shankar now needs to rediscover himself.

He is considered India’s answer to James Cameron and his romantic thriller I has been touted as the movie of the year, even if it is only January now. His name is Shankar, he has a 90% hit rate, and his magnum opus has released for Pongal, worldwide, in over 15,000 screens. I is a story of love, revenge, jealousy and truth. Lingesan is a bodybuilder who dreams of model Diya (Amy Jackson) on one side and winning the Mr India title on the other. She is the educated, sophisticated rich girl. He is the exact opposite – a guy who lives in the housing board flat and whose Tamil is as local as it gets. But that doesn’t deter him from ‘loving’ her and he buys every product she models for - right from sanitary pads to bras.

Meanwhile, Diya is relentlessly pursued by model John (Upen Patel) whom she rejects time and again. Diya happens to meet Lingesan at a shoot and ropes him in place of John for an ad shoot in China. The twist in this tale takes place when Lingesan rejects an ad from Ramkumar, a wealthy businessman, and the advances of Ojas M Rajani, who plays a transgender stylist. Suresh Gopi, who plays a doctor, plays another key character in the film.

Vikram essays three characters in the film – the bodybuilder, the model and the hunchback. He has worked hard on the transformation for these characters and that is quite evident from the weight gain and loss, and make-up for each of these roles.

The role of the hunchback is perhaps the most difficult and defining in this film. Vikram has to be applauded for the effort and number of years he’s poured into this film as he is the backbone of the film.

Still, I doesn’t meet expectations – and this is a big disappointment for Shankar fans. Shankar has always made films that had not only technical brilliance, but also told a story that resonated and contained a message. Be it Gentleman, Mudhalvan, Anniyan, Sivaji or Enthiran, there was that distinctive Shankar magic to every film he directed. It was spectacular and entertaining. In I, however, Shankar's magic is missing.

In the past, the writing combination of Shankar and writer Sujatha was one of the best in the Tamil film industry. Sujatha, a pseudonym for writer S Rangarajan, penned the dialogues for many of Shankar’s previous films, including Anniyan, Indian and Enthiran. Unfortunately, his demise while working on Enthiran has created a huge void in Kollywood and perhaps in Shankar’s life too. Shankar worked on I with writer Subha for the first time, and the script just doesn’t measure up.

As for technical brilliance, I has it all – all the scenes in the songs are like picture-perfect postcards. Shankar has done justice to A R Rahman’s tunes and that’s a visual treat in the film. Watching Jackson turn into a mobile, a bike and sprout into a plant may be edgy, but it doesn’t give the movie any depth. As for the chemistry between Jackson and Vikram, the less said the better. Upen Patel, Suresh Gopi and Ojas Rajani end up to be just props and are quite forgettable.

Made with a budget of about Rs 90 crore, I has a running time of three hours and nine minutes. This is a too long, especially when the story is quite flat.The film is one-man show starring Vikram, but perhaps Shankar now needs to rediscover himself. The first step would be to look for a writer comparable to Sujatha.