Mookuthi Amman 2 Gives Nayanthara a Goddess and a Cop, and It Is Out for Diwali

Photo: Googlesuresh, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The trailer for Mookuthi Amman 2 came out on October 21 and it does the thing sequels should do: it keeps what worked and makes it bigger. Nayanthara is back as the goddess, and this time she also plays a police officer who is afraid of everything, which is the comic engine of the film. It opens on November 6 for Diwali in Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam and Hindi, and the subtitle is The World of Maha Sakthi.

Photo: Reaaaan, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Sundar C directs, taking over from RJ Balaji, and that changes the flavour. The first film was a satire about godmen with a goddess as the straight man. This one, on the evidence of the two-and-a-half-minute trailer, is closer to a fantasy action film, with Regina Cassandra as the main antagonist and Duniya Vijay as a second mystical villain. The scale is noticeably larger.

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Nayanthara has been doing a lot of these dual-role, big-canvas films and she is good at them. The trick with Mookuthi Amman was that the goddess was funny, unimpressed by humans and a little tired, and the trailer suggests that attitude survives. The cop character gives her something new to play, and the gag of a terrified policewoman being possessed by a fearless goddess writes itself.

Photo: Nitesh Gill, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Vels Film International produces with Nayanthara's own Rowdy Pictures, and Hiphop Tamizha does the music, which means the songs will be loud and the background score will be louder. It is up against Scene and Moonwalk on the same day in Tamil, and against Ramayana in Hindi, so the Diwali weekend is a proper fight.

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The first film was a surprise hit in a pandemic year and I am curious whether the audience that found it on streaming shows up in cinemas now. Which of the Tamil Diwali releases are you picking first?