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.

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

If you are unhappy with the lack of women-centric themes in Malayalam cinema, here’s a reprieve. This movie belongs to Kavya Madhavan, who has brilliantly delivered the role portraying the hardships of a Malayalee maid in a Sheikh’s house in Saudi Arabia.

In 2005, we wrote that Kavya Madhavan is the only Malayali actress remaining in Malayalam. While the rest – Meera, Navya, Bhavana, Nayantara, Asin – moved permanently to Tamil and Telugu, Kavya stayed here.

That era is coming to an end. Kavya is getting married in March and most likely that will be the end of her career.

During her long career, she did quite a few memorable movies as well as forgettable ones like Pulival Kalyanam, Lion , Kochi Rajavu, and Kilukkam Kilukilukkam. The memorable ones include Ananthabhadram, Meesha Madhavan, Classmates, Vaasthavam, the double role in Ranjith’s Mizhi Randilum, Perumazhakkalam and various other comedies.

Though she was a bankable actress, she never got the kind of roles that Meera did. Also her refusal to act with men her father’s age reduced her opportunities. Since did not want to expose like the others in other languages and all such limitations left her acting with Dileep and Prithviraj.

In 2006, we called it Kavya’s year.

It is tough to say no to money, especially if someone says they are willing to pay 10 times what you are getting now. Kavya could have made lot of money if she switched to Tamil movies, and our first point is that she did not. Bhavana is getting paid Rs. 20 Lakhs in Tamil, while she was getting paid Rs. 2 Lakhs in Malayalam. Even little Mukta George who acted in Achanurangatha Veedu has changed her name to Bhanu and is acting in Tamil. [2006 - Kavya’s Year]

Kavya is 24 years old, which makes her old in Malayalam cinema where older men want to act with even younger heroines. With Roma, Bhama and others on the scene, Kavya looks like a mature actress and she started fading away.

Also Malayalam cinema is not so fond of women oriented movies.

Another dimension to this story is – irrelevance. Except for occasional movies like Perumazhakkalam and Achuvinte Amma, there are few movies in which the heroine is important. The movies today have heroes who do everything and just need a beautiful face to appear in few scenes and songs. Very rarely heroines get a author backed role in Malayalam films. [2005 - Heroines]

Even in the serious cinema world, she did few off beat movies like Gauri Shankaram, Sheelabathi and Annorikkal, but they were sufficient enough to win any awards. Her best role in our opinion would be Mizhi Randilum and Perumazhakkalam.

She will be missed.Technorati Tags: Kavya Madhavan

Photo courtesy:manoramaonline.com

NowRunning.com comments:

Madambi is a celluloid saga that falls squarely into the replication category. Rehashing is the keyword in it, and as every moment, event and character is redone and fixed up in fresh slots, credibility takes the back seat to sentimentality.

There are just a few odd occasions when the story deviates from the conventional, and then you dearly wish it hadn’t. For, then it turns into an inconceivably dim-witted state of affairs that lacks sensitivity. Back in the time-honored mould, its smooth sailing once again, albeit a yawn inducing one. There are only delusions of grandeur in this otherwise cut-and-dried film that’s totally harmless. As much as it is inoffensive, it’s mediocre, typical and quite common place.

Almost everything in Madambi is reminiscent of something or someone you have seen before. What’s upsetting about it, more than its ordinariness is its staunch adherence to a cinematic tradition that’s fast losing out on its very rationale.

Sify.com reviews:

The film is built on simple bits of screen writing fluff and is made to appeal to the highly susceptible audiences. The basic story is as old as the hills, and etched from various movies of the past- Balettan, Vesham, Vatsalyam and a few Tamil village movies of Vijaykanth and Sathyaraj!The first half is rollicking fun, that will keep you hooked but in the second half it turns out to be an emotional tear jerker, with a contrived and easily predictable climax. The secondary cast of actors in the film like Jagathy, Innocent, Siddique, Biju Pappan (the ham-handed cop), Gopakumar, Narayan Nair, K.P.A.C Lalitha, Sriraman and others are all caricatures we have seen before in many films and they look like a bunch of ciphers.

Rediff.com’s review:

There is no novelty in the film’s plot or the narrative technique. Still, Mohanlal’s character has some substance in it.

Gopalakrishnan (Mohanlal) is a money-lender in a village. People misunderstand him to be money-minded, without having any emotional bond even towards his mother or younger brother Ramakrishnan (Ajmal). There are other story elements that are typical to Mohanlal films like the enemies in the form of a feudal family, as well as people, who know he is a do-gooder.

As the story moves along, we learn more about our hero. He is hard-hearted, as he was thrown out his father when he was a teenager for his wayward lifestyle. His mother hates him for doing that and his brother hates him because he does not let his brother pursue his dream of being an actor.

It is remake season in Chennai. After deciding to remake Srinivasan’s Katha Parayumbol, Tamil producers are on the look out for more Malayalam movies which can be remade and one film they have discovered is Ranjan Pramod’s Meesha Madhavan.Once a movie is identified, the next problem is to find suitable actors and according to reports Karthi (Paruthiveeran) will be playing the role of Madhavan.

Nayantara was offered the role played by Kavya Madhavan, but she found the role “heavy”, instead she wants to play the short role played by Jyothirmayi. This we find strange and the only possible explanation is that the role is too hot for Nayantara to handle.

If you remember the movie, there is a scene where Dileep comes to steal Kavya’s waist ornament at night. This is probably the most sensual scene Kavya has ever appeared and it did not look vulgar in the movie. Nayantara must have found this very “hot” and “heavy”, which someone with her image would not like to do. We hope they find someone more homely like Namitha for this.

Recently Kavya Madhavan made some remarks on politics and the folks at thatsmalayalam.in have not liked it a bit. Kavya said that she does not like politics and the violence that goes with it. She said that if politicians who organize strikes get beaten up they should not cry and complain.

In support of their argument, thatsmalayalam folks narrate the incident between director Samy and Padmapriya. It seems Samy slapped Padmapriya and they ask, should Padmapriya have gone home crying? Instead of that, Padmapriya complained to the various film organizations and the director was banned for a year. According to them this ban was possible only because those film organizations existed. They argue that the case is the same with students in the sense that they strike for a reason, like fee hikes and other issues which affect students.

It all makes sense when you read it, and nonsense when you realize that facts have been cherry picked. When Padmapriya got assaulted, she complained to the film organization and got the director suspended. This was a genuine case of grievance and we think Padmapriya did the right thing for she deserves her justice.

When it comes to student strikes, the folks at thatsmalayalam think that all student strikes are for worthy causes. We studied in a college where strikes were called for the flimsiest reasons like Israel-Palestine issue or because an American President landed in New Delhi both of which have nothing to do with us. Often these strikes turned violent resulting in college closure. Once we were asked by the Principal of the college to check the newspaper to see when the college would re-open. Thus to say that all student strikes are for a reason is like saying that all Jayaraj movies are classic.

No other state has as many strikes as Kerala. Does this mean that injustice is being dumped on Malayalees alone in whopping quantities? Like Kavya there are so many of us who are sick of the hartals and bandhs. We think people have the right to protest, but we think people also have the right NOT to protest. Some of us want to go about our lives without loss of our daily wages, but currently as it stands, a random group of people can decide that they will block the road and will not let you go to work. If such people are forcefully removed by police, like Kavya, we have no sympathy towards them.