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.

LA Times reports:

Mr.Mohanlal, a leading actor in Southern Indian Cinema will be doing a major role in the untitled  sequel of James Cameron’s Avatar. Recently Mr.Cameron vistied Mr.Mohanlal in UAE and held discussions. Mr.Cameron had offered a role for a southern Indian actress Ms. Lakshmi Rai in Avatar 2. It’s also reported that the parts of the movie will be shot in Indian sub-continent.

Mohanlal will be in Los Angeles soon, to hold more discussions. Media had already reported that Ms.Rai will be in California soon.

Entertainment Weekly offers more details about Mohanlal’s role in Avatar 2:

Story will revolve around a submerged Island off Indian coastal state of Kerala. Mohanlal will be doing the role of an Indian Army officer leading a contingent of multinational army for an underwater warfare. Mr.Lal was selected because of his convincing roles in Indian War movies. Another Indian movie star, Lakshmi Rai was also offered a role.

This is a major development for Indian cinema, perhaps on par with Kabir Bedi’s role in Octopussy.

Happy April 1st everyone

Direction: Joshiy / Joshee/ Josh-hee or some other funny spelling.  Other crew: I don’t know, and I frankly don’t care, because, they are not even worth mentioning.

Well, we have all seen this – a hundred times.  A father of high moral values – misunderstands his son – thinks son is gone rogue -  dad supports the villains -  kicks the son out of his house – later when the villains attack the father,  son returns – saves him – father says sorry and dies.

Just to refresh your memory – Sphadikam, Balettan, Chotta Mumbai – a few in which Gentleman Cadet Mohanlal himself starred.  So if you have seen any of those,  save yourselves from this one,  go buy a bottle for the cost of the ticket and enjoy your evening.

Josheeyi, Josh-hee, joshy josh hey Joshey after the hangover of 20-20 is stuck in the same soup formula,  mega movies,  huge stars(literally!),  larger than life roles and cheap slap stick comedy.

Here is the story,  or what is left of it:  Rtd. Captian Vargheese Mappila (Saikumar) marries off his daughter Jessy (lakshmi Gopalaswamy) to Krishna(Goergootty) who is actually a pimp in Mumbai. Christi(Mohanlal ) who is a decent god fearing, family loving son, as he always used to be in all movies,  goes to Mumbai and finds out the dealings of Georgeootty.  Georgeootty kills the goondas who were chasing them for no apparent reason, while he could have run away, hands over the gun the Christi and escapes. The police arrests poor innocent Christi(violins in the background, please).  Georgootty doesn’t stop there – he goes home, kills Jessy, his wife, again for no apparent reason. The clever villain then goes to Kerala, to Saikumar and tells him its Christi who did all this.

Tang da-dang !

Poor Christi out on bail, returns to his father to explain these things – Then the familiar thing happens -
Christi: “Dad, I have to tell you something”
Vargheese Mappila: “No, I dont want to hear anything! You have spoiled the family’s prestige ! you killed my daughter! Get out ! I dont want to see you again!”

Christi: “ But dad, its kind of important, you should hear this”
Vargheese Mappila: “No! I dont want to hear it! Get out!”

(well, if you remember seeing such scenes a 2983 times before, starting from Satyan-Sheela movies,  its your fault,  you don’t forget anything, do you?)

Christi, is disappointed as much he would be if he didn’t get ticket to a movie, walks out of the house,  promising never to return.

That bugger pimp Georgeootty, killed his sister, put him in jail, blamed him for everything, won the trust of dad, and is staying in the same house with your other sister -  and Christy cool, simbly walks out.

If you are still with me, there is more- Suraj Venjaranmoodu is irritating( if i had a cook like him, he wouldn’t last 2 days at my home – got to admire the patience of the Home Minister – enacted by Devan), Harisree Ashokan( his 24th time in the role of a broker) is damn irritating.  Guys, wake up!  The name of what you did on screen is called cheapness, not comedy. I had a better laugh when I watched clowns in cheap circus tents.

The intro scene of Mohanlal:  After the usual build up,  there is fire all over the screen – Mohanlal appears and floats horizontally and fires bullets at the audience, then he splits into 3 and joins back again.  What an amazing skill!  I hear that Mohanlal recently mastered this trick while training with the Indian army.

Then there are the main villains- Vijayaraghavan and co. They just drink scotch whiskey near the pool and randomly stab and kill people.

The average age of all the actors in the movie is 53 years, 9 months.

A fat and old Suresh Gopi, a faint shadow of his former movie image,  mouthing rhyming dialogues and marching here and there in uniform.

The fight scenes at regular intervals of 20 minutes are perfectly choreographed by Disco Shanti. No body gets hurt.(nothing spectacular here, go out for a smoke if you like. if you have seen one Mohanlal fight, you have seen it all)

Its a 3 hour 15 minutes of non stop torture. Wait for a few weeks and the theater projector operators will do some editing for you,  and hopefully make more sense then what is presently there. I am sure with some lavish use of scissors, we can recycle the rubbish and re-create a 10 minute crisp completely different movie, or maybe a couple of them.

Other than to show a bit of skin and also to show us, the stupid audience, that Christi is a man with emotions and is capable of loving and caring, there is Lakshmi Rai, and two completely unnecessary songs.

Dileep blabbers his usual stuff and roams around through screens, well,  I don’t know what else he did in the movie, other than being a reason to bring in Kavya Madhavan and an irritating song in foreign locations.

This is the kind of nonsense movie these old Jurassic age directors churn out. These are the kind of movies the stalwarts like Mohanlal and Suresh Body choose to act.

And these are the kind of movie that we, poor Malayalees, deserve to see – because it’s us, and no body else, gave the movie makers the feeling that we will gulp down any sh*t that is presented to us packed in colorful superstar wrappers and tied with the ribbon of over hype.

Enjoy your evening watching the news at home, it will be more entertaining than this movie.

Christian Brothers Rating: 2/10

Joshiy and his team have reworked their ‘Twenty-20’ template to make a half baked thriller called ‘Christian Brothers’. There are foreign location songs, superstar Mohanlal in a larger than life role, father-son sentiments, Dileep’s comic acts,  twists which come in every thirty minutes,  Suraj Venjaramooodu’s bufoonery, an interval punch similar to what we saw in Twenty Twenty, fight between the superstars(Mohanlal,Suresh Gopi), a little bit of skin show(in the form of Lakshmi Rai) and everything else needed for a commercial potboiler;  yet the movie fails to engage you completely. Christian Brothers will be lapped up by the fans of the Superstar for sure and in all probabilities will become a big hit. But for an average movie goer it is just an average fare.

Story and the Script: Scripting for a multistarrer is no child’s play. Uday Krishna and Sibi K Thomas have come up with a no brainer script this time too. ‘Christian Brothers’ is marginally better than their own ‘Pokkiri Brothers’ but is not as entertaining or racy as Twenty Twenty. The loop holes in the script are far too many.

Christy (Mohanlal) is an informer to the Mumbai Police. Meenakshi, the daughter(Kavya Madhavan) of the Kerala Home minister gets kidnapped and Christy is called for help(remember Sagar Alias Jacky).  Christy happens to be the brother of Jojiy(Dileep) who is madly in love with Meenakshy.  Some unexpected twists later, Meenakshi’s kidnapper George Kutty(Suresh Krishna) gets killed and Christy is the suspect.  Enter Joseph Vadakkan, the super cop played by…you guessed it right!  There are also a number of subplots involving Laksmi Rai,  Lakshmi Gopala Swamy,  Jagathy Sreekumar et al. Biju Menon, Vijaya Raghavan, Jayan play the baddies while Saikumar(!) plays Mohanlal’s father.  As in Pokkiri Raja there is a father-son sentiments track here too. Sarath Kumar as Andrews has a very small role and features in two important sequences.

The main problem with the movie lies in its script itself.It is a remixed version of ‘Twenty-20’ and ‘Pokkiri Raja’. The first half of the movie (in which issues like land grabbing have been delt with topically)is a bit confusing and also drags considerably.  The much hyped fight between Joseph aka Thomichan(Suresh Gopi) and Christy fails to make any impact. Those who have seen twenty twenty would easily predict the interval twist involving the Underworld don Andrews and Christy. The father character of V.Mapilla(Saikumar)is just a xerox copy of Nedumudi Venu’s character in Pokkiri Raja.

Direction:  Joshiy has done a decent job at handling all these big stars efficiently.  CB is the kind of movie which relies heavily on it’s star power rather than a credible story line to get itself worked at the box-office and the veteran director has made full use of his huge star cast here.

Cast and Performances:  CB is Mohanlal’s show all the way and his character, Christy will be a treat for his fans. Though the movie has nothing challenging for an actor of his caliber, it will give him the much needed hit. Suresh Gopi repeats his daredevil cop act for the nth time and honestly I didn’t like his character much. Dileep plays his usual comic acts with elan,  manages to raise a few laughs whenever he is on screen. Though Sarath Kumar has a very small role he looks aged and tired on screen.  The leading ladies have nothing much to do.  In big budget movies like this, the female characters are casted just for the eye candy bit. Even no such luck here.  All the heroines except Kaniha looked plumb and totally out of shape.  Suraj Venjaramoodu manages to irritate the audience with his stale jokes.

Editing:  Ranjan Abraham hasn’t resorted to fast cuts and other gimmicks for cheap thrills. But at almost 3 hours, Christian Brothers  is way too long.  Wonder why 1)Suraj Venjaramoodu 2)the ’sayyavve’ song picturised on Mohanlal and Laksmi Rai 3)the character played by Harisree Asokan 4)even Lakshmi Rai were included in the film.  A lot of scenes in the first half of the movie were really unwanted and the lag was overtly felt at places.

Cinematography: Anil Nair has done a shoddy work with his camera. The movie suffers due to excessive lighting. Lakshmi Rai hasn’t looked so bad on screen before! Extreme close up shots were also there in abundance. Every pore and crease on her face were clearly visible, thanks to the mediocre camera man.  Another instance in which Anil Nair’s camera plays the spoil sport is the London scene in which Dileep is talking to Kavya through phone.  The whole scene is lit up in such a way that even a ten year old can spot the thick layers of make up used on Dileep’s face.

Songs and BGM: Deepak Dev hasn’t disappointed much.The songs are hummable especially the Moham Kondal track. The picturisation of the other two tracks Karthave and Sayyave are lousy, to say the least.  While the Karthave song has a  Maine Pyar Kiya (CID Moosa)/ Kavilinayil(Vandanam) hang over to it,the  Sayyave track suffers due to the unnecessary skin show by Laksmi Rai. Both Lakshmi Rai and Kavya Madhavan doesn’t look good and are overweight. The re-recording reminded of Twenty -20.

Verdict:  Christian Brothers will be loved by the fans of Mohanlal,Dileep and Suresh Gopi. For others its only a watchable fare. CB is no Twenty Twenty.Though it tries too hard to be one, it only ends up as a pale imitation. Rating-5/10

Reviewed by nikhimenon@gmail.com,nikhimenon.blogspot.com

We are telling this story because it depresses us when someone takes a beautiful song and does not visualize it beautifully. The amount of care directors like Lal Jose, Priyadarshan etc take in filming songs have to be appreciated. So it depressed us a lot to see the visuals of the song “Enthadee Enthadee Panamkiliye” from the film Shikkar.

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.

The reason we are asking this is because there is news of revival of Mohanlal’s Pranavam Arts banner. Pranavam Arts rekindles fond memories on all time classics like His Highness Abdullah,  Bharatham, Kamaladalam etc. More than that, this banner was synonymous with good movies, good acting, good music etc. It was also synonymous with Mohanlal the actor rather than Mohalal the Narasimham.

Last movie made by the banner was Vanaprastham, which got Mohanlal awards but was a huge debacle in the box office. We look forward to see more of Mohanlal the actor. Which brings up the question – what about the banner Aashirwaad cinemas – fronted by Mohanlal’s ex-driver Antony Perumbavoor. Would Pranavam be the premium brand – like Toyota-Lexus? Is the plan to have Aashirwaad produce run-of-the-mill movies and Pranavam to produce high profile movies? Or has Mohanlal dumped Ashirvad altogether? Or is it an attempt to win the best millennium actor award beating mammotty, muthu pattar and kaimal?