The year is 2023, and Venky Atluri has written and directed the Indian period action drama movie Vaathi. The movie was simultaneously shot in Telugu and Tamil; the latter was given the name Sir and was made by Sithara Entertainments and Fortune Four Cinemas, two Tollywood studios.[2][3] The movie stars Samyuktha Menon, P. Sai Kumar, Tanikella Bharani, Samuthirakani, and Hyper Aadi in addition to Dhanush, who is making his Telugu debut.

Dhanush performs the role of Bala Murugan, an assistant teacher in a well-known school owned by Thirupathi (Samuthirakani), who views education as a business. Thirupathi appoints three third-grade assistant teachers from his institute to work in a government school in a far-off village after the state government adopts a new bill that requires private schools to take over government-funded schools.

One of the teachers is named Bala, and he views it as a challenge to use his teaching strategies to effect change and yield outcomes. But because most of them assist their parents in raising their families, he must deal with kids from the poorest socioeconomic backgrounds. When Bala eventually succeeds in persuading both the parents and the pupils to return to school after much effort, he is met with a new set of difficulties. Does Bala succeed in his goal of changing the pupils for the better and getting the required outcomes?

Vaathi's relatability aspect plays a significant role in its effectiveness. There is a lot to relate to and agree with in the tale, characters, and presentation. Vaathi will have a deep and enduring impact on you if you come from a middle-class background and had parents who had to come up with money for school and tuition fees. The movie does quite a bit of mass-market commercialization to appeal to the public, but its main message—that everyone deserves access to high-quality education—hits home emotionally. The second half of the movie does have a Super 30 hangover, but Vaathi is still quite good despite the resemblance. The movie's epilogue is clever. 

In parts that showcase the struggles of the middle class and those below them, Dhanush continues to flourish. The movie SIR, in which Dhanush makes his Telugu debut, is a bold one because it delves into a completely new market. He is sincere as a responsible instructor who is driven to effect change. In a few scenes, the movie does let Dhanush play to the crowd, but his character is never given any praise in the narrative. Samyuktha gives a strong performance in her role and succeeds despite having little screen time. The antagonist in the film obviously needs to be better developed because even someone as multifaceted as Samuthirakani struggled to make the part intriguing. 

It's become simple to forecast the ebbs and flows of the subgenre since the notion of the teacher as a saviour has been present in our films for such a long time. It seems like it's just a matter of time before we see another montage of a campus cleanup with obnoxiously happy students, whether it be from a movie like Saattai (2012), the more recent Master (2021), or Nammavar (1994), which served as inspiration for the Lokesh film. The "back to school" movie also merits a similar degree of invention to produce freshness, much like how a screenwriter needs to work extra hard to avoid the trap of predictability in a sports drama.

First of all, the movie is more in the vein of Saattai or a Malayalam movie like Manikyakkallu (2011) (casting Samuthirakani as the bad guy here is a wonderful touch). This isn't only because the first scene in each of the three movies has an idealist taking over a failing government institution. In addition to highlighting the obvious in the educational system, these movies also employ particular characters, who are mostly students, to explore more general themes like consumerism, caste, and poor parenting.

Vaathi attempts to handle each of these issues, though to varied degrees of success, and what gives it a slight advantage is the way it delves farther into the world of education. The primary antagonist in this film, played by Samuthirakani, is a man who not only founded private schooling in Tamil Nadu, but who also employs Balamurugan (Dhanush). Fear of a new law that would put a cap on how much private schools may charge in tuition is the conflict that gets things started.

The antagonist decides to battle the idea that high-quality education should be available to everyone rather than the new law. The choice to put Balamurugan in a government school was not made in the hopes that he would make it better. His credentials, on the other hand, are those of a junior instructor without any prior teaching experience. We so anticipate the setting to inject fresh flavours into worn-out clichés when he departs from his hometown to begin his new job as the mathematics teacher in a distant school on the border of Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. We also anticipate that this scenario modification will bring up concerns that haven't previously been addressed in movies of a similar nature.

____My rating for this movie 7/10____

Thank you…