Little John, pretty Jyotika

Rajitha

Little John is Bentley Mitchem, an import from England.

The character played by the English actor is on a tour of South India, doing research on temples and related matters. Jyotika helps him get around, and in the process they fall in love with each other.

Prakash Rai plays a tantrik-type character, who puts a curse on Mitchem, shrinking him to dwarf-size.

What happens next? Does Little John ever grow back to full stature? Those are the questions the film -- being made in Tamil, English and Hindi -- revolves around.

Singeetham Srinivas Rao (whose credits include Apoorva Sagodarargal (Appu Raja in Hindi, and the silent film, Pushpak) directs, under the Media Dreams banner. The producers have roped in Anupam Kher to play the pivotal character of a temple priest, probably with an eye on the Hindi marquee.

Debutant Praveen Mani scores music, with Vairamuthu contributing the lyrics in Tamil, while Javed Akthar does the same for the Hindi version.

Prakash Rai's role is proving to be one of the talking points of the film, and is getting much play in the trailers being aired on television channels. Rai has developed a penchant for experimentation -- and in the process, already garnered two National Awards for best supporting actor with Iruvar, wherein he plays a character patterned on Tamil Nadu chief minister Muthuvel Karunanidhi, and Anthapuram.

Recently, he also reprised the role of eunuch, played in the Hindi original Sadak by Sadashiv Amrapurkar, in the Tamil remake, Appu.

Rai has also turned his hand to production. His first film, Duet (which in fact gave the name to his banner as well) starring Prabhu, Ramesh Arvind and Meenakshi Seshadri, proved to be a hit, but since then, hasn't had much success.

As the film readies to make its bow on the marquee in mid-April, the audio release function (January 23, in Tamil, with M S Vishwanathan giving away the first copy to Jyotika, and February 23 in Bombay, with Anil Kapoor presenting the first tape to Yukta Mookhey) brought some joy. The cassettes are proving to be hot property in Tamil.

Industry buzz is that the film will do well -- more so, given that its light-hearted theme is just the ticket for the holiday season.

ALSO see a video clip from Little John!