Apoorva Sagodharargal is a 1989 Indian Tamil-language comedy-drama film, directed by Singeetam Srinivasa Rao. The film stars Kamal Haasan in three roles, as a mechanic, a circus clown who is a dwarf and a police officer, along with Gautami and Rupini playing lead roles with Srividya, Manorama, Nagesh, Jaishankar, Nassar and Delhi Ganesh playing supporting roles. The music for the film was composed by Ilaiyaraaja, with lyrics written by Vaali. The film was produced by Kamal Haasan and his brother Chandra Haasan under the production company Raajkamal Films International.
The film tells the story of twins who were separated during childhood who grow up in different localities, with one of them Appu, being a midget working for a circus. Appu comes to know that his father was an honest police officer who was killed by four criminals. The rest of the film shows how Appu succeeds in avenging the death of his father and how Raja proves his innocence as he is blamed for the murders committed by Appu.
The film's story was written by Panchu Arunachalam, while Kamal Haasan and Crazy Mohan wrote screenplay and dialogues respectively. B. Lenin and V. T. Vijayan handled editing respectively, while the cinematography was handled by P. C. Sriram. The film premiered at the International Film Festival of India, The film was released on 14 April 1989, was a box office success and completed a 200-day run. It became the highest grossing Tamil cinema movie, until its collections were broken by Annamalai. It was dubbed into Telugu as Vichithra Sodarulu and into Hindi as Appu Raja in 1990. Appu Raja released on 50 screens in North India, netting ₹50 lakh at the box office.
The music was composed by Ilaiyaraaja.[25] The songs remain popular even today. The sad theme music in the film was highly acclaimed and remains popular to this day. Regarding the song "Pudhu Mappillaiku", Kamal said that he wanted a tune similar to that which is sung in the Academy Awards function, whereas Ilaiyaraaja said that Kamal wanted a tune reminiscent of the song "Naan Paarthathile" from Anbe Vaa (1966).The song "Unna Nenachen" is one of the classic songs from the film. The song was rewritten by Vaali over 5 times and Kamal Haasan was still unhappy with it, but only at his sixth attempt, he became successful in delivering what Kamal wanted. Elements of "Annatha Aadurar" has been used in the song "Saroja Saman Nikalo" from Chennai 600028 (2007).
All the songs were written by Vaali, while Prem Dhawan and Rajashri wrote the lyrics for Hindi and Telugu versions.
