[coauthored with Nikhi Menon]

In the finale of Munch Star Singer Junior Mr. Jagathi Sreekumar made a speech in which he came out against the anchor Ranjini Haridas. Mimicking her style of speaking, which is Malayalam with an English accent, he said that the anchor should just do anchoring and should not have any opinion on the singing. You can see the video to realize the scorn he has for this anchor.

We have watched many finale episodes of Idea Star Singer and Munch Star Singer and never have seen a guest speak like this. Usually people come and say a few mild words of encouragement, show some stardom and go away. Jagathi instead gave a speech in which he went on and on and defined how people should behave. He praised Sujatha and Venugopal and ranted on Renjini who was standing next to him. In her own words:

Just the other day I was the victim of an individual who took advantage of his right to freedom of speech to publicly embarrass and ridicule me. Moreover, all this happened on national television! The man in question, who from now I shall refer to as Mr Moon, clearly overstepped the limits of what to say when and where, and to my agravation, had no regard or respect for the event at hand or the people concerned

Now you may like or dislike Renjini’s style of compering or her way of talking or having her own opinions. She is a very competent compere very able to handle any situation thrown at her. When some singers stop singing or have trouble, she very ably handles it. She is very opinionated and if you have watched her retorts at Sharath and ‘Sree Kuttan’, you will know she can handle herself quite well. It this personality that makes her a memorable compere compared to others who just utter what is told or do the bare minimum as Jagathi wants.

What Jagathi wants is not her to stop such things, but to stop passing judgement on the songs. He says only judges can pass judgement. Why? As someone who does not know to sing and is not musically trained, she is just like us. She is the common man. Her opinion is from that side and so far we have not found it ‘arochakam’. It never felt odd to us. So why this outburst? Is there another story we are missing here?

Now if she wanted to retort, Renjini could have said that Jagathi should stop acting in all those semi-porn movies, but she did not. She in fact wrote a weak piece in Deccan Chronicle. It is not for her to suggest what Jagathi should do, but such basic courtesy was not extended to her. This is a new low for Jagathi in the past year. We saw this is a new low because this is a man who wallows in the depths of civil behavior. To give another example, last year he was on television talking about his marriage to Mallika Sukumaran. At some point they divorced and he explained that the divorce ‘may’ have been due to their caste.

So the anchor asked once more if she ever mentioned anything like that and he said she did not. So in reality, he still has no idea why she left, but by throwing a caste issue into the mix he muddied the water. You can say, he did a Thilakan at that moment.

So we have few options for analysis. We can do the whole ‘savarna-avarna’ thing. Or we can notice that Jagathi rants mostly against strong women and dump some anti-feminism on him. But then this would be like trying to write a review of ‘Pokkiri Raja’ or ‘Sagar Alias Jackie’ when in fact there is a simpler explanation.

Nelbin raises an interesting point:

It was absolutely a scandalous behaviour from Jagadhi to say scathing comments about Ms.Haridas and the program she is hosting at such a big ceremony watched all over the world .Jagdhi managed to pull in great crowd support for his outrageous remarks on Ms.Hardis as they booed and jeered at her with the every word he uttered. Sadly Jagathi and those guys represent the last generation of malayalees with parochial attitude who take pleasure in taunting others in public

Yes, Jagathi does have the right to express his views and no one can blame him if he believes that Renjini and co are abusing our mother tongue with her ‘manglish’ but is this the way to show his disapproval? Shouldn’t he had shown the courtesy to tell her his views in person?

At this point, let’s look how Ms Renjini reacted to this insult. She could have easily retorted to him in the same manner or could have even did a ‘Sreesanth’(remember the bhajji-slap-incident?) but the brave girl that she is,maintained her calm and carried on with the show as if nothing had happened..!(C’mmon,thats’ what we call dignity,isn’t it?.)Mr. Jagathy instead of blessing and enlightening the ‘junior star singer’ winners about the potential film offers that could come their way(whom in all probabilities will be forgotten by every one,including jagathy by the next season of the show) chose to play it to the galleries and win himself some cheap publicity by dissing Ms Haridas in national television.

Jagathi is one of the greatest actors of Malayalam cinema on par with Nedumudi Venu, Thilakan, Mohanlal and Mammotty. But that does not make him a great human being. During the time of Prem Nazir, Jayan and Sathyan we did not have this much media coverage and we did not know how they were in real life. Now thanks to the 24 hour media and due to the willingness of these stars to throw up whatever comes to their mind on TV, we know what kind of scumbags they really are.

Christian Brothers is the most awesomest movie we have ever seen this year. The primary goal of the script writers was not to tax the brain of Malayali viewer and provide VFM (Value for Money). It is filmed in exactly the same house as Twenty-Twenty, with most people of that movie playing exactly the same role. Usually in such movies, the villain is not revealed in the beginning. But here it is revealed in the beginning itself. This helps the brain. It also helps if you have Alzheimer’s.

Various factors add to the coolness of the movie. It has people who wear cooling glass inside the house. Then it uses sophisticated “computer” technology and prints “Tracking Signal” on top of Google Maps when Mohanlal’s henchmen try to track phone calls. It has a song with lyrics “moham kondal innu ethu pennum oru poochaye pole”. It has henchmen standing around the same swimming pool in which Prithviraj and Jayasurya swam in Robinhood discussing life-problems, like should we kill him ourselves or should we get pavanai? It has Babu Antony with a black towel tied around his head (hint: he is a commando).

The awesomeness comes in installments.  Mohanlal plays a Christie, an underworld connected Malayali from Mumbai who has come to help Kerala Police and the Home Minister. If this does not bring goose bumps, we don’t know what will. Also, as we all know anyone who ends up in Mumbai becomes an underworld don. It is called Newton’s fourth law. One day you are simply walking along Juhu Beach and boom, you become a Don. Then police is after you and every unshaven youth calls you “Bhai”. It happened to Mohanlal two decades in Abhimanyu. It happened once again now. You would think he would have learned by now.

The next peak comes with the arrival of Suresh Gopi as goonda. It kind of breaks the rhythm. You are so used to seeing him police uniform, you suddenly feel as if the world has started spinning in the opposite direction. Before we sink into despair, the gooda turns out to be an IPS officer – you know the Mussorie kind. He also has a name like Antony Punnokadan or Joseph Vadakkan or something of that sort. Once he arrives, he confronts Mohanlal and they throw dialogue at each other like those arrows from Ramayana serial. Awesomeness oozes so much that we need some buckets to collect it.

Christie saves the home minister’s daughter (Kavya Madhavan) from the always destined to fail henchmen-rape, but he ends up in jail due to a family mess up. You know son innocent, father does not believe it, some bad apples in family theme. By 90 minutes, the number of people who want to kill or eliminate Christie looks like a Malayali queue in front of the liquor store – Sharath Kumar, Biju Menon, Joseph Vadakkan, Sai Kumar.

Once someone is in jail, there is a Newton’s law which immediately applies.  As Newton wrote in Principia Mathematica, every jailed person shall be presented in court and every opposing force will try to prevent this from happening. This movies too has one such scene where all the alpha males get to show their alpha maleness. Imagine Sharath Kumar, Suresh Gopi, Mohanlal, Babu Antony all with guns. It is 20 minutes of pure testosterone. Then there is also the scene when the son is not invited to his sister’s marriage, but he shows up anyway fooling the entire police force. Finally, guess what, everything was based on a misunderstanding. These silly people.

Then Suresh Gopi gets to dump dialogue let and right. At men, women, ministers, and Salim Kumar. Only children are spared. But once his “Ammachi” calls, he becomes such a docile creature that if you pour some milk in a saucer he will stand on all fours and drunk it and wipe his lips with his tongue. He also blushes when his mom talks of marriage. Maybe it is because he is violating some marriage laws, but it is cho-chweet.

But we are not trashing the movie because it is a pure commercial film and we don’t get it. There is one classic scene where Mohanlal is holding Kavya Madhavan and Co as hostage. She wants to make a phone call to Dileep, but Mohanlal the hostage taker does not allow it. So she rants, saying he does not know what love is. This is a big mistake for if anyone knows what love is it has to be the Mumbai based underworld connected Malayali. Mohanlal switches to flashback and thinks of his love Laxmi Rai in saree drenched by the Kerala monsoon. At the end of this scene, he hands over the phone to Kavya Madhavan. So touching.

There is another scene where Mohanlal shows up with a gun during Kavya Madhavan’s engagement ceremony. The number of Malayali actors/sq ft is quite high in the scene and still he manages to get his way. The dialogue that got thrown around in that scene would have killed most people, but the alpha males survive for the climax scene. In the final climax, where everyone is beating up everyone else and furniture is being abused without mercy and bullets are flying around like mosquitoes in a typical evening, you really don’t care if Sharath Kumar is speaking Hebrew. All you want to know is only one thing. Will the three heroes shoot the villain together or will Christie alone shoot him with the two guns in either hand. We won’t tell you what happened. You should pay decent money and watch it yourself.

You may ask, other than classy lines like “Pakistanil kayari Bible vayikkaruthu” is there something worthwhile in this movie. It is a fun movie and it is fast paced. Before you start guessing which previous movie of Sibi K Thomas and Udaykrishna had this scene, the editor moves to the next scene. It repeats again. Then only a person of Joshiey’s calibre could have pulled this ensemble cast movie with sufficient dignity. Think how this movie would have been if Sandhya Mohan or Bhadran had directed this. Or think if Joshi had directed this instead of Joshiey. We also admire the talents of Mohanlal, Dileep and Suresh Gopi for who can make any scene look interesting. Yes, we have seen them do the same thing a zillion times, but still.

For those of us used to seeing so called “Entertainers” like Twenty-Twenty or various mindless comedy movies, Urumi is a welcome change. It is a bold move from the producers to think of a big canvas movie, get a pan-Indian cast and film it as professionally as possible. The movie falls into a new category which can only be called fantasy-historical-fiction for it is not historical-fiction. In historical fiction, the writer tries to stay within the historical narrative and weave a tale without violating the space-time continuum. Brilliant writers like M.T even weave a new tale within the given parameters. But in this movie Shanker Ramakrishnan decided to throw the history out of the window. Instead what we have is a tale which takes place during Vasco da Gama’s voyage to India and that is pretty much the history part. Rest of the stuff is his imagination in overdrive mode and he makes it very clear in the begining of the movie when he writes all incidents have been changed for dramatic purposes.

But guess what. We don’t have any issue with it. A story is a story and the only question is if the dramatic purpose has been served. It a revenge saga of a boy who wanted to kill Gama because Gama killed his father. We can call this a Hero’s journey for it tries to follow a set pattern as the hero travels and goes through new lands and has new adventures. In this movie Kelu Nayanar’s calling is revenge. He knows Vasco da Gama is in town and wants to kill him. In fact at the begining of the movie itself the pre-history is given and Kelu has crossed the threshold and made a commitment.

So now that the motive has been given, what do you do for the next 2 hours 30 minutes? We see him travel along with his buddy Vavvali (Prabhu Deva) and during their travel they meet rest of the cast — Chirakkal Bala (Nithya Menon), her father (Amol Gupte), the king of Kolothunaadu and his scheming minister (Jagathi Sreekumar). They also meet Arakkal Ayesha (Genelia), Vavvali’s mother and also an Oracle (Vidya Balan). Finally, as expected, Kelu gets his revenge.

Imagine now that you are on a travel and you meet all these people and take their pictures. It is not really an interesting journey isn’t it. You need some twists in the plot. In fact there are some twists in the sub-plots, but none of them affect Kelu or his personality. The sub-plot concerns the way Kolothunadu is ruled and the succession battle there. There is another sub-plot concerning Arakkal Ayesha and her fight, but that too has nothing to do with Kelu, except for the fact that he is around. In such movies, what you want to see is the hero being put to test, completely pushed to the ground and how he survives that, rises and achieves his goal. Think Devasuram. Neelakantan is pushed to the ground and his machoism cannot save him. He has to rely on Revathi’s character to teach him some lessons about himself and life. As you empathize with him, there is a transformation in the viewer. The viewer who hated him till interval is now rooting for him.

In Urumi though, Kelu is never down. He is like Mayavi who appears in every troubled scene and saves the damsel. That is not really interesting. In Star Wars, when Luke is down, he has to go to a mentor, Yoda, who trains him and he returns back. Our heroes don’t need any training. They are experts in fighting and singing the moment they are born. There is no change in Kelu’s personality in the 150 minutes of the movie. He delivers dialogue in the same dead-pan mode and this makes him really an uninteresting person.

But there are three people who make the movie interesting: Jagathi, Amol Gupte and Nithya Menon. They get quite a number of scenes and it is a delight to watch them perform. These are well etched characters.

We already have written about the music, so lets mention a few things about cinemotography. It is by Santosh Sivan and there is nothing more we need to say. The visuals cannot get better than this. But just watching brilliant visuals without a strong story does not make a memorable movie. But then Santosh Sivan has some staple shots which are repeated in most of his movies. There is a scene in Asoka where SRK and Kareena take bath in slow motion under a waterfall. There is an exactly similar shot in this movie. Another obesession of his is eyeballs and closeups of eyeballs. From Terrorist to this movie, you see the same shot. In one song all the characters jump up and down on an invisible trampoline. You can call these shots his signature, but these repetitive shots pull you away from the immersive experience.

While the songs are terrfic, another let down is the BGM. Look at the scene where Chirakkal Bala is attacked and the music that goes in that scene. It is a fight scene and the music is the most inappropriate one. We know why it was done. Each person has a particular theme and that music is blindly dumped when the character appears. Similarly there is a piece when Ayesha appears and she is asked to sit on the lap of Chirakkal king’s lap. There is a scene where Prithviraj comes to resceue Ayesha and guess what music plays in the fight scene?

The next terrible thing in the movie is the visualization of songs. We simply loved hearing those songs, but when we saw them, some were not interesting. Aarane Aarane was done very well and so was Chimmi Chimmi. But look at the visuals for Aaro Nee Aaro. It is like a rock video songs with all the extras and Prithvi jumping up and down. It looks as if people from the 15th century suddenly time traveled to the 21st century MTV studio. Also the Oracle song called Chalanam Chalanam was simply terrible.

The movie brings up an important issue that none of us know about our history and care about it. Thus when the movie starts we see this guy called Krishnadas who is selling his ancestral property and then after hearing about Vasco’s story, changes his mind. The movie also paints the true picture of Vasco da Gama who was one blood thirsty trader. While the visuals are stunning, there is nothing great about the story. It is not the stuff of classic movies. While the creators have made a decent entertainer, they have missed an opportunity to create a Gladiator. We had great expectations from Shankar-Ramakrishnan-Santosh Sivan combo and maybe that is why we are disappointed.

In Malayalam,  Urumi’s release preceeded with two trashy superstar movies, August 15 and Christian Brothers. In a sense, time was ripe for Urumi. For the lead actor Prithvi Raj, facing a huge road block in his career, with back to back flops, this should be a welcome relief.  That he had invested in this movie as the producer, speaks volumes about Prithvi Raj’s confidence in this movie. Reviews reveal that the movie is visual treat – expected from a Santosh Sivan movie.

For a moment we have to admire the producers of this movie. They could have made yet another August 15 or China Town or Christian Brothers, but they did not. Instead they came up with an original idea, got a pan-Indian cast, got excellent technicians and finally got Deepak Dev to compose classy music. So for those who claim that Christian Brothers is “entertainment” and that we should feel blessed that our superstars have created another rehash of all their previous movies, this movie shows a different path.
Its a gem among the utter non-sense that is running now in theatres; namely Christian Brother and August 15. A real serious, dead-on-the-money commercial film from the master craftsman – Santhosh Sivan makes the film the best visual treat available now.

Anees KA writes a detailed and innovative review

1. Cinematography – Of course, no one needs reminding that the camera is set in motion by … and he still continues to wonder.
2. Art – Minimal/Simple/Effective/Impressive
3. Lighting – The most awesome and un-appreciated part of this film is lighting or rather the lack of it. This film is an excellent example to other Malayalee directors on how to make use of ambient light.

4. Direction – Commendable improvement from Sivan’s last Malayalam outing – both in terms of story and direction. I see that Mani Ratnam’s closeness is finally producing some positive effect on this guy’s direction. A drooling pace was his trademark so far. With this film, he almost manages to break it.
5. Makeup – On target. I hardly noticed any makeup.
6. Costumes – Always costumes are invariably the worst part of every Malayalam period film. Everybody from the rich to the poor, wear brand new un-soiled clothes. But this time, its taken care of. And I respect the artists involved for their meticulous effort.

Habeeb Arakkal Writes an interesting review:

Sify.com says:

Santosh Sivan’s Urumi is a miniature masterpiece of moods, emotions, anxieties ruled by a thirst for revenge. The film unfolds like a ballad and is a sweet and simple fairy tale. The 170 minutes film works to a large extent to its perfect casting, fantastic performances, soothing score and technical brilliance.

Santosh has made it like how a period drama should be made without too much talk about freedom struggle, no bombastic dialogues or playing to the gallery for heroism. His vision and concept gives this epic the feel of a Brave Heart or Gladiator.

Rediff.com Comments[ a tad detailed than usual]:

Technically, Urumi has the Santosh Sivan stamp all over it; not only angles of shots but even the gait of every actor is peculiarly choreographed so as to give the performer an individual style, sometimes stretched to the extent that we feel that they are striking a pose for a still photograph.

Prithviraj is masculinity personified with an opportunity to show off his bulging biceps throughout. Prabhu Deva’s bony physique (who plays his childhood chum Vavvali) acts as contrast, as is Jagathy Sreekumar’s effeminate villainous Chenichery kurup.

GeneliaD’Souza, as the warrior princess Aysha, impresses.

Nithya Menon as flirtatious and childlike. Paired with Prabhu Deva, she has her moments of glory. Only Vidya Balan’s presence is not justified by the story.

IndiaGlitz waxes eloquent:

The music director of the movie Deepak Dev have succeeded in giving immense richness to the soundtracks with his songs and background scores, set in epic proportions. All of his songs comes up in the right places. The technical crew including editing by Sreekar Prasad and camera department headed by the director and Anjali Shukla, has given the best of the outputs, which are hard to describe in words. So is the case of the art director, the makeup team lead by Renjith Ambadi and costume designer Eka Lakhani who seems to be in the running for the Nation’s best accolades in the coming National awards, for their contributions to this movie..

All in all, ’Urumi’ is a must watch for all those who love quality cinema. Redefining the traditional qualities of period dramas, ‘Urumi’ is sure to become a movie that will be respected and adored by Mollywood for its creative panache, tremendous performances and great technical wizardry.

Idea 2:  Some Indian advertisements are very stylish, but they are mostly 30 seconds. What if we made a 2.5 hours movie stringing together a bunch of advertisment like scenes.

Sagar Alias Jacky Reloaded is part of such experiments .

Sify.com says:

At times you get the feeling that Swamy has remade his K.Madhu directed Irupatham Nootandu, which was a far better entertainer. In fact, this film is the perfect example of the new style of film making being followed by young directors in south fed on Hollywood and Bollywood DVD’s. First decide and design action sequences, exotic locations, costumes and then write the story around that.

It’s an opportunity lost, as Mohanlal the most flexible actor in Indian cinema is asked to look wooden and walk throughout wearing designer coats and leather jackets, which after a point of time becomes predictable or plain boring and agonizingly snail-paced. Jagathy Sreekumar is wasted while Jyothirmayee’s item dance fails to sizzle.

NowRunning.com comments that it’s Much Ado about Nothing:

If I had the liberty to re-name a film that’s already been released, I’d rename this one as ‘Much Ado about Nothing’. But the great English bard, who created a wonderful play with that title, would probably groan in his grave if I did so. Disappointing! That’s all I can say about Amal Neerad’s second directorial outing, the much hyped ‘Sagar Alias Jacky Reloaded’. In fact it was one of the most awaited commercial films in Malayalam in the past few months. And all the waiting has now come to naught.

If it was not for the hype and the hoopla surrounding the film, it would probably have passed off as an OK kind of film. But because of the advertising overkill, expectations ran high, and unless it was spectacularly brilliant, it was doomed to disappoint. And disappoint, it does. Given the build-up that the film was given, being lenient in criticizing ‘Sagar Alias Jacky Reloaded’ wouldn’t be fair.

Finally, IndiaGlitz’s review takes the cake : He says Malayalis should not care much about story, screenplay and other frivolous things any more.

The movie must be definitely promoted for the quality of making, rather than for its thematic content.

Recently Bharadwaj Rangan wrote

I wouldn’t be surprised if, in the near future, multiplexes everywhere take to installing braincheck rooms outside the cinema halls. As we hold out our tickets to the usher, I can see us being asked to deposit our cranial matter for safekeeping through the duration of the movie, so that not a sliver of analytical process will be allowed to impede our enjoyment of the film in question. And it’s tempting to imagine the pandemonium after the screening, outstretched hands of screaming patrons intimidating the pretty girl (oh, as long as we’re dreaming, why the hell not!), pointing her this way and that: No, not that grayish lump. That one, there, next to the one with the smallish occipital lobe. Ah, yes. Be careful. Phew. Thank you very much. Have a nice day.

Johnny Antony movies have always qualified for such service. Then the target audience of his movies like C.I.D. Moosa, Kochi Rajavu, Thuruppugulan and Inspector Garuda are not folks who watch Iranian and French movies, but those who love to see Salim Kumar and Dileep fall into cow dung wearing Spiderman costumes. The industry word for this group is: family audience. Johny is very clear about his path and unapologetic about making such cartoonish movies. Since C.I.D. Moosa and Thuruppugulan were hits and the other two made decent money, all with mediocre scripts, he is the darling of producers.

James Albert made a dream debut as the script writer of Classmates. The murder mystery told in multiple disjoint flashbacks by multiple characters was a new style of story telling in Malayalam and with the superb direction of Lal Jose and support of an ensemble cast, it was the biggest hit of the year. James Albert is not an expert in slap stick like Sibi-Udayan who wrote all Johny Antony movies so far. Thus when James and Johny join hands in this movie which features, we hope that James will pull Johny out of the low I.Q. genre.

The story unfolds in a plush shopping complex and revolves around two youngsters, Roy (Vineeth Sreenivasan), an accountant in a private finance firm, and Sanju (Vinu Mohan), who works in a shop selling home appliances. They come from modest backgrounds but have big dreams. Annie (Bhama), who works in a travel agency, and Meenakshi (Sandhya), the daughter of a banker, are the heroines in the film,” [Balancing act]

Vineeth Srinivasan’s songs have always been chart busters and very popular among the masses, but we have not seen the actor in him. This movie is an opportunity for public to see if he has inherited any of his father’s genes. For the Nivedyam pair, Bhama and Vinu Mohan, this is another great opportunity. Usually Johny’s movies have some popular songs, but this time none of the songs written by Anil Pachooran and tuned by Mejo Joseph fascinated us. Since none of the main actors have crowd pulling capability, the success of the movie depends entirely on the script and direction and we have to see if J&J pull it off.

The year is 2008 not 1980. Malayalees have lost the appetite for slow, sentimental, autobiographical movies, but East Coast Vijayan known for his stage shows where his name is repeated every 15 minutes has not realized it. His first film, according to reviewers induces drowsiness. Also when we thought that Jayaram’s career could only go up from where he was before, he seems to sprinting down the path only traveled by actors like Shankar and Ratheesh.

Movie Buzz writes

Vijayan East Coast who likes to be known as poet, writer, producer and now director with Novel, has come out with a film that will put you to sleep! The few audiences who turned up to watch the film, on its third day of its release and that too a Sunday, left half way into
the film.

Vijayan’s plot has been “inspired” from Hugh Grant- Drew Barrymore romantic movie Music and Lyrics, and he has malayaleeised it with some mushy romance and M. Jayachandran’s music which are melodious but not picturised well though Azhagappan’s camera is top class. Jayaram as Sethu and Sada as Priyanandini are good.

This Novel has to be flipped through, otherwise it will take ages to read it, as it moves at snail pace.

Unni Nair of NowRunning.com writes

Being a musical of sorts, Novel has some romantic songs, penned by the director himself. The songs have been composed well and shot in a romantic manner too. “Onninumallathe…” is already popular and the other songs too impress. The problem with the film is that there is nothing new in it, and also that film viewers in Kerala today don’t like to see sentimental stuff and the film has too much of sentiments in it. Being slow-paced also goes against it.

To sum up, Novel is an average romantic story marked by average performances by the lead artists and others. The scenarists could have put in more of an effort and then the film would have been better. It’s not an insufferable bore. It’s not an inspiring love-story either. Just a romantic film, that’s all!