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.

We commend Mohanlal on this move – in taking up this position and serving the country. This also brings up the 200 kg question: what about Suresh Gopi.? In various police roles, adorned since the time of Marthanda Varma, there is no crime he has not solved and no politician he has not bought to justice. He made the state 100% English literate(meaning every Malayalee know at least one English word – shit), but no one has given him even an honorary constable title. Then people like him, who walk in slow motion with theme music, don’t wait for favours. They just get it. In the new movie, he is an IG, you know, just like that.

This also brings up a 60kg question. What about Dileep? If two army movies can win Mohanlal a Lt. Col title, what title should Dileep get after Kallan Gopalan and Meesha Madhavan?

Superstar of Malayalam cinema Suresh Gopi is caught in a legal tangle for wearing a police uniform while attending a public function recently to launch community policing in Kerala.An advocate in Kochi filed a criminal petition in a court against Gopi Tuesday, saying he had committed an offence as the Indian Penal Code and the Kerala Police Act bar others from wearing police uniforms in public. Gopi defended his action saying he was shooting for a film in which he acts as a police official and there was no time to change into civilian clothes and attend the function held March 26[Superstar in trouble for wearing police uniform]

As far as we know Police Uniform is not like Karna’s kavacha kundalam which is hard to remove. Even Chanthu did not take much time to undress with all those reams of clothes in Oru Vadakkan Veeragatha. Suresh Gopi probably has worn the police uniform so much that he probably thinks that is his regular dress and forgot. No big deal.

1. First the original starring Shobana, directed by Fazil

2. In the Kannada version P. Vasu asks Soundarya to walk as if she is in a park.

3. Thinking that the butchering was not upto mark, P. Vasu decides to shine some lights into Jyothika’s eyes in the Tamil version.

4. No lights or other gimmicks in Priyadarshan’s version, but Vidya Balan is supported by two actors who don’t know acting.

5. Now to cleanse the brain, watch the original once more.

At the end of it, we feel this movie should not have been remade, but subtitled and released. Manichitrathazhu experts, your comments are solicited

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Sify.com says:

Shaji and Rajesh wanted to say a message that there are so many similar people who lost out their dear ones during the emergency period and no justice or compensation has been paid by the government and those responsible for the emergency excess are still roaming around free. But what the director fails to understand is that “emergency excess” is old hat and it does not strike a chord with today’s audiences

Added to that there are no nuances, twists or turns, and no drama in this non-thriller, with only Suresh Gopi bringing some cheer to otherwise a film that will put you into a deep slumber!

IndiaGlitz.com reviews:

In the technical sides also the film is superior with crisp editing by Arunkumar (Sorry, for his credit is montage) and moody photography and extreme angles by Raja Rathnam in which no values are compromised, even though the film was shot in a record 25 days. The only song in the film ”Yamuna Theeram” is an unwanted suffering, but Rajamani in rerecording definitely sets the pace with enthralling theme music.

If you can walk away with several weak plot points that may inquire your intellect, the movie may make you feel as a well made ‘‘endeavor’’.   It may be unfair to expect a wondrous exclamation, from the viewer’s side ‘ at the end of a picture but certainly ”Sound Of Boot” is not the one to be avoided, at least for its atypical narratives. Perhaps that may be the point that the makers are also bearing in their minds.

Rediff.com reviews:

The prolificacy with which Shaji Kailas and Suresh Gopi churn out movies is amazing. What is more interesting is how they derive the plot of these Malayalam films, where the protagonist is more often than not a policeman. Sound of the Boot is no different.

So, how do we make the distinction? Apart from the title and the names of the characters, the director has found an ‘innovative idea’ of changing the mannerism of the hero. So, here he tightens the lace of boots (symbolic reference to the title) after getting down from the jeep at every crucial juncture.

Now the third thing: the movie is a tragic love story. No, we are not talking about the producer of the movie, but the story of the movie itself which has been made public. The movie is set in a Holiday Home, which is a place frequented by tourists and lovers. When the character Rahul Krishna (Bala) and Meera Nambiar (Honey George) reach this place something bad happens.

Suresh Gopi plays the investigative officer who comes to a hill station to find the real culprits behind a murder, which rocked the state. Shaji Kailas has made Boot in a different way from his usual style of film making. There is a lot of suspense element in the movie, with a twist in the climax. The film is very important for Gopi and Kailas who are going through a bad phase.[`Boot` on Dec 7 ]

Every time we read the words, Suresh Gopi, Shaji Kailas, different way of film making, we fall of our chair laughing for selling Lux soap in a new cover does not make it new lux soap. If Shaji Kailas wants to see different way of film making, he has to see Vargam and Chocolate back to back or Paradesi and Rock’n'Roll back to back. Changing an IPS officer to a CBI officer is not different film making.

According to Shaji Kailas, he chose the name Boot because it is the right symbol for people who have been oppressed through the ages. It would be the right name for the Shaji Kailas movie since he has been oppressing us with terrible movies for the past decade or so. But then hey who are we to tell Shaji Kailas what to do. If he wants to make another police training video, he should do it. As viewers we will evaluate on its merit or else we will go and watch OSO again.

While Hollywood has to resort to tales about fish, cars and robots, in India we have such rich stories to choose from. Our mythologies like Ramayana and Mahabharata contain various sub stories and wonderful characters which can be used to teach moral values to children. The previous generation grew up on Amar Chitra Kathas, but that will not go well with the new TV watching generation and animation movies are the best way to get to them. If the movies we done very well, then even adults will find it interesting.

Nalin Singh, an NRI, has decided to make an animation movie about Lord Ayyappa. Titled Manikantan, this will be the first of its kind in Malayalam.

The 2-D movie will be dubbed in other regional languages and in English too. Scriptwriter Krishnakumar says the story of Manikantan will be narrated through the eyes of a seven-year-old Parvati and her parrot Panchami. “But the focal point of the story is neither Parvati nor Manikantan. It is actually a golden bell that once belonged to Manikantan. Parvati, who finds this bell, is magically transported to the world in which Manikantan once lived,” says Krishnakumar.

According to Reji Syne, the director of the movie, ‘Manikantan’ will not follow the Disney style of making. “Most Indian animators ape the Disney style especially in characterisation when making an animation movie. We, however, are making it as Indian as possible with a mural-like feel to the scenes. Just as the Japanese have a stamp of their own, we are trying to create ours.”[Legend of Manikantan]

Animation movies also have the added advantage that they don’t require the dates of superstars, minor stars and asteroids for their production. The only time the stars are required are for dubbing and this would free the script writers to focus on the story and make it as visually pleasing as possible. These are nascent steps for the full length animation movies and it is wonderful that Kerala is right there from the beginning.