More disturbingly, there’s a lot of sword-fighting, a lot of torsos being impaled – at one point, a little girl’s throat is slit. Our cinema, clearly, is incomplete without wedding-night jokes. There’s a running gag about a man’s frustration at not consummating his marriage. Puli ultimately is may be up for debate in some quarters. Even the contact lenses the villain (Sudeep) wears are a piercing blue. The visual effects are nicely done, and cinematographer Natarajan Subramaniam opts for a keep-the-kids-happy palette - everywhere you turn, there’s rich colour.

There’s strength-giving magic potion, like in the Asterix comics. A frog that scratches its head while in deep thought. Or how about that man with a moustache? There’s no joke there - but imagine the moustache on his head. A touch like that shows you this isn’t a completely lazy movie. It’s that the little women wear peanut-shell blouses. It isn’t just that an interlude in this chosen-one-saves-the-world saga features little people.

Through his career, the director has pitched his tent a couple of feet away from the mainstream – here too, his quirky inventiveness is charming. Puli, starring Vijay, must be counted as some sort of success. If Chimbu Deven’s brief was to create a colourful diversion for undemanding children, then

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