Sumo movie review: Shiva's sports comedy wrestles more with silliness than story

Sumo movie plot

Shiva (Shiva) is a surfer who lives by the beach in Chennai and works in a shack owned by Jack (VTV Ganesh). As he plans to migrate to Australia along with his girlfriend Kanimozhi (Priya Anand), he comes across a sumo wrestler (Yoshinori Tashiro) washed ashore. With the IQ level that of a one-year-old, Shiva takes the sumo under his wings and the duo do odd jobs to feed him, but once Shiva realises that Yoshinori is a seasoned wrestler back in Japan, he is assertive to take him back home.

Sumo movie review

When you know there is Mirchi Shiva (who was recently seen in Soodhukavvum 2 : Naadum Naattumakkalum), or as he is known by the monicker Agila Ulaga Super Star Shiva, in a film, it’s more or less given that the story would be light-hearted and a lot relies on the making and moments onscreen. So, when the one-liner of Sumo is about a Chennai man getting acquainted to sumo, you tend to build certain expectations on how the film will show the progressing relationship of two men who come from different countries and cultures. But despite opportunities for the film to explore this, Sumo settles for frivolous and silly jokes and not to forget a barrage of body-shaming one-liners to describe the titular character.

‘Manishan thimingalam’ (human whale), ‘gundu paiyan’, ‘dadiyan’, ‘gundu thambi’ are a few words used by the Chennai folks to refer Yoshinori. And finally, he gets rechristened as Ganesh, a no-brainer when coming to name a person who they think resembles the Hindu elephant deity (and we don’t see the physical similarity at all!), Sumo takes one step further by dressing up Yoshinori as Lord Ganesh for Vinayaka Chaturthi. If body shaming goes on one side, there is also racism when Shiva and Jack go to a Japan consultancy centre only for the local agent to be dressed in kimonos, with his eyebrows strapped up. Do any of us know any local consultants dressed in international attires while working for other countries? 

Amid all these, the film does not really spend enough time to build the relationship between the sumo and Shiva. It instead makes Yogi Babu, a relative of local MLA to pine after Kanimozhi, while the politician himself sings regional songs as answers to journalists come to interview him. These sequences neither are enjoyable nor contribute to the storyline, making Sumo an underwhelming film with a premise for potential. But Sumo insists being the entertainer it sets out to be, and the second half witnesses a change of locale to Japan and how Yoshinori is encouraged by Shiva and co. to win a sumo competition.

The sub-plots are weak, and executed weaker. The story gets wrapped up as a flashback, with Jack narrating the tale, and we don’t see the characters really closing their arcs. An example of this would be, a side story of how Shiva and Kanimozhi are trying to get Australia visa to settle abroad, but we are neither shown the couple’s goals and efforts that make them achieve it. What we get is only a voiceover dialogue from Jack on what happened to them. Sumo has many such underdeveloped characterisations, which never allows you to resonate with the people in the film.

For a film that takes a genre shift in the second half, and explores another culture, Sumo would have come out better had it redeemed itself. When it fails so, you lose its touch of connectivity, and Sumo ends up as a wasted opportunity.

Sumo movie verdict

Sumo has been put together to be a sports comedy entertainer. Neither does it delve into the sports aspect, nor is able to make you laugh. If you don’t count the body shaming jokes, the film more or less treats sumo only as an exhibit, expected to pique curiosity. The Aayiram Vilakku director, SP Hosimin, who helmed Sumo as well, heavily underutilises his characters and story's potential. Sumo ends up as a silly wannabe comedy entertainer that lets go of its opportunities.