Recently Kerala Govt decided to honor Padmasree Sakalakala Vallabhan Kamal Hassan at the Onam celebration week. This should have been a non-issue, but it became an issue because AMMA (Official Motto: Prevent people from earning a living) President Innocent decided that it was sacrilege. The reason is that no Malayali has been honored by Tamlians.
We are with Innocent on this. It is time Tamilians honored some Malayalis, like Mammotty or Mohanlal or Idavela Babu. We certainly deserve this. We have shown our loyalty in many ways. In award shows we have sung more Tamil songs than Malayalam songs . We have made our Malayalam actors speak Tamil in Malayalam movies. In most of our movies we have made the hero a resident of Pollachi. In movies like Lal Jose’s Mulla, we have added Tamil songs without reason. In Idea Star Singer, we made Malayali singers sing Illayaraja and A R Rahman hits. We liberally exported our heroines to act in Tamil movies and liberally imported the movies they have acted. With these actresses we have also reduced their costume budget.
Ever since Meleparambil Aanveedu was released every other movie had either a good Gounder or a bad Gounder. And every Malayalam movie worth its salt had an obligatory dappankuthu song. Even Mammotty dances in colorful shirts now. Finally, we even honored a Tamil movie by giving it the award for path breaking film in a Malayalam film award function!
When will our Tamil masters reward sepoys like us? Till they do that, we don’t need to honor any one.
Oru Naal Varum evokes nostalgia, unfulfilled potential and leaves you with a sense of incompleteness.
Srinivasan’s characterization: Srinivasan’s role as a corrupt Asst. Town Planning Officer is half baked and confusing. We are not sure if Srinivasan became corrupt for obtaining a medical seat for his daughter or if he’s corrupt all the way.
Mohanlal’s characterization: Though the movie starts with promise of story a charming common man facing hurdles in life goes off the track when character evolves. Mohanlal’s character lacks details and is not realistic. Lack of chemistry with Sameera Reddy’s character is one of the major drawbacks. Those scenes(involving Mohanlal and Sameera Reddy) are neither well written nor well directed.
Best Scene: Mohanlal’s first visit to Sreenivasan’s house. It’s a hilarious scene aided by some self deprecating humour from Srinivasan, which brought back fond memories of some of the good Mohanlal-Sreenivasan movies of yesteryears.
Sameera Reddy – Trophy heroine of Mohanlal, character has no impact, no acting needed
Background score – jarring and inappropriate most of the time.
Good Acting: Devayani gets the most believable role in this movie and her acting makes the role very convincing. Nedumudi’s competent performance as an ex service man in one of the good things about the movie.
What went wrong: Boring second track, which involves Mohanlal’s family life makes the movie slow down and pulls the movie down. So boring that you desperately want the movie to switch to the other track involving corrupt Srinivasan.
Ending: You know that bad buys will be punished. Script writer chose a hurried ending leaving behind lot of undigested stuff.
Final word: Showed us some glimpses of that glorious period when the Mohanlal-Srinivasan duo did wonders. Very topical subject, but treatment not as humorous as movies like Vellanakalude Naadu. Srini didn’t deliver – as an actor and as a script writer.
Reviewed by Nikhi Menon.
What should you do if you think you are talented in doing more than a task at a time? Focus on the one in which you are the best in and try to improve more, else you might end up being mediocre in everything. Doubting why I have turned philosophical all on a sudden? Go and watch ‘Malarvadi Arts Club’ and resume reading this post if you still don’t trust me.
Vineeth Sreenivasan, the 26 year old son of the talented, iconic script writer-director Sreenivasan is some one who is obsessed with lengthening his resume every now and then. After a successful singing ( which is still going strong) career and a passable’stint in acting has turned to scripting and directing movies now. His debut movie ‘Malarvadi Arts Club’ was supposed to be a trend setter(atleast Dileep, Kalyan Jewellers and Radio Mango thought so!) with an all new star cast, fresh songs and an astounding story line. After watching the movie I was pretty convinced that Vineeth is also banking on the ‘rent a dvd,make a movie’ trend which has helped Priyadarshan,Sanjay Gupta et al mint crores back in Bollywood. While Sanjay Gupta and Co might have spend a lot more on English/French/Korean DVDs ,Vineeth sreenivasan has effectively cut a lot of cost by resorting to cheaper DVDs(thanks to Moser Baer and Eros) of desi flicks like Rock On!, Chennai 600628, Goa, and Happy Days.
So we have 5 men who do nothing 24*7 living in an imaginary village some where around Thalassery. They organises hartals and walk in slow motion to kill time. Oh! the movie has to run for two hours atleast, so let me add a it felt as if the comedy track was added with Suraj Venjaramoodu just make sure that movie runs over 2 hours. And Suraj plays, once again the role of comic Goonda.
The gang of 5 are always in short of cash , hence they decide to start a music band to earn money. Santhosh Damodaran is the lead singer who can beat even Kaithapram in Kacheri. But apart from Kumarettan who runs the local tea shop(Nedumudi Venu) no one else knows that they are such great ‘pulis’. So no bookings for the show. Surprise surprise,Santhosh comes on TV reality show. Right from Kumarettan to Goonda Suraj start SMSing for him and he wins. Then comes the really surprising twist in the form of intermission.
Two random female characters were thrown into the mix just for the sake of having female chanracters. So we have an love story in between Purushu and Geethu.They meet during one of their early ganamelas and fall in love. After her brother gets him beaten to pulp, their love ripens and they marry only after a touching dialogue sequence between Purushu and her parents.
Now have a climax which is so different from Rock On and London Dreams since neither Salman, Ajay Devgan nor Farhan Akthar is a part of Junior Sreeni’s Malarvadikoottam and Santhosh Damodar has to sing a Malayalam song here.For a change, we have a couple of hummable songs by Shaan Rehman but that doesn’t seem to be good enough for a movie which banks heavily on it’s music to get itself clicked. Where is the Kashmalan song?
Coming to the technical departments of the movie, Vineeth Shrinivasan has chosen the conventional way of story telling . A lot of unwanted scenes like the one in which one of the lead men falling from height while making preparations for a programme could have been easily avoided. Sukumar’s camera also didn’t surprise us much. As far as the song visuals were concerned, there was nothing extra ordinary there too.The new comers were convincing with the guy who acted as Purushu being the pick of the lot.The character of ‘Kuttu’ is not as funny as it was supposed to be.The girls come and go after a couple of scenes. Some of the scenes were genuinely funny like the one in which Purushu first meets his love. As I mentioned before, Shaan Rehman’s songs were hummable,but it’s just not good enough. But the re recording was good. On the whole,the whole movie ends up as just another average fare which desperately tries to recreate the magic of similar ‘friendship’ movies made in our neighbouring states.
Verdict: Very Average Movie(since it is competing with other blunders like ‘Apoorva Ragam’, otherwise would have given it a below average tag)
In Malayalam Cinema, we don’t know how much money a movie makes. We have to scavenge for numbers from unreliable reports. Often you have to take the producer’s word for it and only he would know the actual truth. But when it comes to Hollywood, there is proper accounting, except that it has been designed for fraud. A movie can take in millions and still be at a loss.
TechDirt has a great post, explaining this with examples.
The really, really, really simplified version is that Hollywood sets up a separate corporation for each movie with the intent that this corporation will take on losses. The studio then charges the “film corporation” a huge fee (which creates a large part of the “expense” that leads to the loss). The end result is that the studio still rakes in the cash, but for accounting purposes the film is a money “loser” — which matters quite a bit for anyone who is supposed to get a cut of any profits.
S N Swamy and K Madhu enthralled us with the CBI series of movies, each of which progressively declined in quality. It reached a point when the parody became more entertaining than the original movie. So when S N Swamy and K Madhu made another movie and it sank without a trace, we were curious to see why it failed.
The movie is set in a picture perfect village, which has rivers, canals and greenery all around. It is one of those villages where Mohanlal would sing “Manja Kiliyude Moolipaatunde” and Prem Nazir would sing “Suprabhatam”. According to Kerala Film Script Act 23/34, if there is a village, there has to be two warring factions and an elephant has to be involved. Check.
The movie starts with an episode involving the local thief Kesu (Riyaz Khan) who provides the necessary diversion. At this point pretty much even the elephant knows that he is just a diversion and a technique to advance the script forward. No worries.
The police station is run by Jayaram 1 with constables Harisri Asokan and Indrans who perform comedy so intensively that no one is surprised when Kesu jailbreaks. To quantify their acting even better let us say that they make Suraj Venjaramoodu look like a decent comedian.
One day, a girl is killed and Jayram 1 starts investigating when Jayaram 2 arrives as a goonda. But it turns out that he is not a goonda, but from Crime Branch. That turns out to be the cue for Rajamani to blare the CBI BGM.
There are some beautiful scenes which have to be mentioned to explain the quality of this movie. There is a scene where the cop Jayaram is on night duty monitoring vehicles. Then he spots something and looks carefully. He sees a man walking in bright daylight. So he takes a torch and chases the person and the scene turns dark again. In another scene Jayaram is sitting in the police station when he hears his sister screaming in their home. So he runs and reaches the home in time to watch the thief run away.
The production values should also be mentioned. There is a scene where Jayaram 2 decides to lower himself into a canyon using a crane. The scene is probably 10 minutes long, with blaring bgm, filmed with the same quality of a home made birthday video.
Finally in the climax when the culprit is reveleaed it seemed as if S N Swamy did an inky-pinky-ponky on the characters and randomly picked one. It just fails to resonate.
This is a movie which was made three decades late. If it was made in another time and place, it would have been a super hit.
Pokiri Raja (Comedy), Pappi Apacha (Comedy), Happy Husbands (Comedy), In Ghost House Inn (Comedy). These were the four Malayalam movies that money so far. Two movies, Katha Thudarunnu (Semi-Comedy) and Mummy and Me are still trying to break even.
So what does this say about the Malayali movie goer? We want entertainment. We want comedy. We don’t want any sort of movie which will make us think or weep. (We have our lives for it).
Lets look at the top movies in Tamil. Singam (Action), Paiyya (Romance), Vinnaithandi Varuvaya (Romance), Thamiz Padam (Satire), Angadi Theru (Human interest), IKMS (Cowboy spoof).
The standard response to this comparison is that movies like Paleri Manikyam can only be made in Kerala. But the point is that if no one sees it, then no producer will bet on a movie like Paleri Manikyam in the future. If you want only Pokiri Raja, Pappi Apacha genre movies you will get more of it and there is a limit to how many movies a human can tolerate in which Mammootty is dancing. (CIA is considering this as a replacement for the banned craft called waterboarding).
If you look at the movies that have made money in Malayalam, even Seeman can guess where this is all going to end. Couple this with cutting-the-branch-we-are-sitting-on mentality like denying new movies to theater owners, banning serial actors from appearing in movies, banning movie actors from appearing in serials, affinity of Malayai viewers towards Allu Arjun movies, Overdose of Suraj Venjarammoodu – all this can only work wonders for malayalam cinema. In fact the ban they should enforce is script stealing. And maybe a ban on Malayalam fim personalities from organizing themselves into various albhabet soups.
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