A cursory look at the way Prashanths twin characters were developed and how Aishwarya Rais invented twin characters were developed, it is easy to note that the film is more female-centric (a term that was thrown around liberally by every second Tamil filmmaker, purely for purpose of promotion, until the pandemic started) than many other films featuring the hero in a dual role.

The curious case of Jeans and what it meant for Prashanths career.

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When, why and how did Top Star Prashanths career take a turn for the worse The answer could lie with his biggest silverscreen success.

Aishwarya Rai and Prashanth in the 1998 film Jeans directed by S Shankar.

This throwback story, written by a colleague, gained eagle-eyed netizens attention, many of whom felt the need to comment on Prashanths now near non-existent film career in Tamil cinema an astonishing, albeit not entirely surprising, climb down the ladder of fame and influence from the heights he occupied in the 1990s.

For the uninitiated, Prashanth is one of only three actors (the other two are Rajinikanth and Kamal Haasan), to have acted in a film directed by three of the top filmmakers ever produced by Tamil cinema the late Balu Mahendra, Mani Ratnam and S Shankar.

A few days before Menons Kandukondain Kandukondain reveal, it was reported in vernacular media that Prashanths father, the actor-filmmaker Thiagarajan, is in talks with actor Tabu to reprise her role from the Hindi film, Andhadhun, which is being remade in Tamil with Prashanth in the lead, and I thought life and its ironies have a strange way of playing out.

The popular opinion among Tamil movie buffs is that it was Prashanths poor choice of films in early 2000s that led to the collapse of a once-promising career.

The other two too suffered colossal failures in their careers and have managed to bounce back.

All three actors did romantic films in the 1990s because it just was the trend then.

The new millennium made all three graduate to action films, but only two managed to survive the transition and continued their foray into superstardom.

The cast of Jeans included Lakshmi (far right), Nasser (second from right) and Senthil (far left).

A good example is actually the blockbuster film Jeans (which released 22 years ago in April 1998); a film I decided to watch recently on Amazon Prime Video amid these developments.

At the end of the film, there was only one thought: Jeans has not aged well, and it has to rank amongst the weakest films from S Shankars stable (there arent many entries in that list, fortunately).

The coming-of-age film Boys and the remake film Nanban are the other two.

The film, though, had some beautifully-shot song sequences with the maestro AR Rahmans tunes amplifying its girth.

The latter has to be the most useless twin character written in Tamil films since even the times of MGR-Sivaji.

Come to think of it, what exactly does Ramamurthy bring to the script apart from his refusal to grow a stubble, at least, or tattoo his upper arms (maybe an ear piercing).

Actor Prashanth All Old Hit Songs