Madras Entertainment's Machakkaran (the man with a lucky mole) is as appealing as ditchwater laced with diluted lemonade well past the sell-by date.

Starring Jeevan, Kamna Jethmalani [Images] and other, it is a tale about an unlucky loser who is always at the wrong end of the stick. Yet, an heiress from a feudal family falls for him like a ton of bricks, antagonising her scheming cop brother and textile-baron father.

Then starts a meandering and meaningless chase through the countryside with fits and bursts of violence. It ends in an equally senseless climax.

With such a storyline, one would have expected pulsating, edge-of-the-seat treatment from the director, Tamilvannan.

Instead, he ends up serving an uninspiring fare interspersed with half a dozen below par songs from Yuvan Shankar Raja.

Jeevan looks unimpressive and mumbles his lines sans expression or commitment. It is clear that Kamna had been told she would be a mere decorative adjunct.

For those with a lot of expectation from this one following two consecutive hits of Jeevan, the letdown is jarring because even those with rudimentary knowledge of a script would have seen through this farce whose funny side defeats its purpose and ends being an antithesis.

On its first day, the cinema hall was just 20 percent full. Obviously, word had got round.

Machakkaran is a sheer waste of time, money, efforts and everything else thanks to the absence of anything worthwhile during its span of approximately 195 minutes.

Rediff Rating: Half-a-star