In a YouTube review picked up by Filmibeat Tamil, critic Prashanth pushes back on online memes about the trans community and points to Sanath's own transition as part of the film's weight.
Karthik Subbaraj's Dorothy opened in theatres two days ago, and the reaction that's travelled furthest so far isn't a star rating. It's a YouTube review from critic Prashanth, carried by Filmibeat Tamil, that spends most of its runtime arguing with the memes circulating around the film rather than grading the film itself.
Dorothy has Keerthy Suresh, Rishikanth and Sanath in lead roles, with music by Ilaiyaraaja. Fans online have already been calling it a significant film for Indian cinema, going by the framing in Filmibeat's report, and Prashanth's review leans into that claim rather than away from it.
His starting point is the meme cycle that's followed the film, much of it repeating the idea that trans women end up in sex work. Prashanth doesn't confirm or deny that framing. Instead he asks why society builds the conditions that push anyone into it in the first place, and draws a line between transgender identity and sexual orientation, which he says get flattened into the same joke online.
According to his review, the gender a trans person feels isn't something chosen. It's there from birth, a bodily process, not a social failure. He points out that some in the community do go on to hold conventional jobs like any officer, and asks why so many others get discarded instead.
A good chunk of the review is reserved for Sanath and Rishikanth, both of whom, Prashanth says, have put in fifteen years building this part of their careers. He goes further, stating that Sanath has personally transitioned and now identifies as third gender, a detail he treats as central to how the film should be watched. That claim comes from Prashanth's review alone, and CutMirchi hasn't seen it verified elsewhere, so treat it as one critic's account rather than a confirmed fact.
Prashanth also takes on the criticism that Subbaraj is exploiting a hot-button subject for money and attention. His response, in the review, is that funding for a film like this doesn't come easily in the first place, and that Tamil cinema itself has stories in its past involving violence against women, including the killing of a woman in love and the killing of female infants, that nobody who's silent on those has the standing to question why Subbaraj is making Dorothy now.
On the music, Prashanth is unambiguous. Ilaiyaraaja, he says, wouldn't have signed on for money alone at this stage of his career, and the score reflects that he understood the depth of what the story is trying to say.
The review ends with a plea to audiences to go watch the film and support it. Whether Dorothy's box office numbers over its first weekend back that up is the next thing worth tracking.
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