When one looks at films that are over a decade old, it is but natural to see if it has aged well. Are the dialogues still relevant? Is the narrative still fresh? Have the actors and filmmaker evolved? In fact, many a time, it takes us back to the time we first saw it, and our response to it today is a reflection of our own evolution. But what if it is a movie that you never saw, and you are watching it for the first time a decade after it was made. What if it is a movie that no one saw because it didn’t release when it had to, and is finally hitting the screens 12 years later? Do you see it as a 2013 film? Do you see it as a 2025 film? That is the conundrum one finds themselves in while watching Sundar C’s long-delayed Madha Gaja Raja, which was supposed to hit screens for Pongal 2013, but a time traveler moved a chair somewhere in the past, and it saw the light of day for Pongal 2025.

Sundar C’s long-delayed Madha Gaja Raja is not the sort of film you enter expecting complex interpersonal relationships or technical finesse. Even if we’d watched the film in 2012 — when it was originally set to release — we may still have found its scenes dated or objectionable. It’s as though we’re forced to remind ourselves that this film is a product of its time, urging us to be kinder because none of us knew any better. Simpler times we no longer have the patience for; like that scene that follows when Raja (Vishal) learns that his friend’s wife has misplaced her gold necklace. Instead of launching an investigation, Raja offers his own gold chain and urges his friends to pool in to make up for the lost necklace. Or the other scene in which Raja deliberately loses a race, just so his rival feels respected in his hometown. Or even the over-the-top nobility with which Raja moves to Chennai to get a corporate honcho to return ₹ 52,20,350 to his broke bestie. It’s all sickeningly sweet, but you’d be shocked at how badly we want to buy into all this.