Release date:
|
March 17, 2017
|
Director:
|
Midhun Manuel
Thomas
|
Cast:
Language:
|
Sunny Wayne,
Aditi Ravi, Aju Varghese, Saiju Kurup, Sudhi Koppa, Renji Panicker, Manikandan,
Indrans
Malayalam
|
When problems beset a marriage, a couple’s interests are best served if
they are left to themselves to sort out their differences. Egoistic, interfering
relatives tend to make matters worse. This has been a recurrent concern in
Indian cinema, but when the director of the screwball comedy Aadu Oru
Bheegara Jeeviyaanu zeroes in on the theme, it is natural to expect novelty.
Midhun Manuel Thomas’ latest film, Alamara, stars Sunny Wayne as
Arun Pavithran, a young bank employee anxious to be married. After several
attempts to find a girl for himself, he falls for Swati (Aditi Ravi) who reciprocates
his feelings. Swati also works in a bank.
Arun and Swati’s problems begin from the beginning, when their
respective families get off on the wrong foot. The first nail in the coffin of
their relationship though is driven in when, just days after their wedding ceremony
in Kerala, her parents gift the couple a large wooden cupboard (alamara,
hence the title). The two move to Bangalore to work there, but their nosy
relatives and that alamara hound them all the way.
Parallel to the lead couple’s marital strife is the tale of a piece of
land purchased by Arun and his pals, Prasad (Saiju Kurup), Suvin (Aju Varghese)
and Justin (Sudhi Koppa). Poor Arun starts feeling crushed, as he handles the
tension with his wife on one side and on the other, resists a land-grabbing
attempt by a Karnataka gangster (Indrans).
The narrator of Arun and Swati’s story is their alamara, which
in itself is an intriguing starting block. Well begun is not always half done
though, as this film proves.
Alamara probably sounded great at the conceptual level, especially in the
hands of the maker of Aadu. It flounders, however, in its execution. It
is not that it is bad, but that it is lukewarm. Bad can still be fun, lukewarm
is boring.
There are some laughs to be had at first, especially because the four
male friends share a relaxed chemistry, the actors
playing them have good comic timing and it is easy to identify with the family
ego hassles that swamp most Indian marriages. Anyone who has attended a desi
wedding and seen relatives grumbling about arrangements, in-laws grumbling
about gifts, etc, will recognise this bizarre
milieu where everyone seems to want everyone to get hitched yet everyone seems
determined to mess up everyone’s marriage.
Take for instance that moment when Swati presents
Arun’s Mum with a gold bangle in the presence of
dozens of family members and local busybodies, and the bangle does not fit. A
normal human being ought to see it as a minor problem, but in a traditional desi
set-up it could lead to assumptions, presumptions, gossip, politics, years of
taunts, hell and humiliation for the bride.
This well-observed episode and the little touches that precede it could
have served as a great kick-off to satirise the Indian family system and our obsession
with matrimony. Unfortunately, as the story rolls along, a lack of zest sets in.
Thomas seems to mistake absence of verve for wryness, and thus is Alamara
lost.
Part of the reason for this missing spunk could be that all the
characters are stereotypes. Every man in the film is dying to be married,
unless he is already married, at which point he starts feeling hemmed in by
that marriage. And why would he not? After all, every husband in the film is a
victim. Every man is a paavam (bechara, simple, innocent) fellow whose
life is being ruined by a woman. Every woman is a nag who is ruining her paavam
husband’s life. All the men are stupid. All the women are manipulative. All the
men lack spine. All the wives are unreasonable, belligerent witches. Yawn.
(Spoiler alert) Everything is sorted out in the end when the paavam male
protagonist takes charge as only a man can, and the women immediately keel over
in submission at a speed you see only from women in films. Yawn. (Spoiler alert ends)
Except for Arun, none of the other characters is fully fleshed out by
John Manthrikal’s writing. For the conflict between Arun and Swati to be
immersive, she needed to be as clearly etched out as he is. She is not. Swati never
rises above being a mere outline.
While it is possible to blame this flaw on the film’s resentful male
gaze and a writer who seems not to see women as people, the fact is Manthrikal’s
characterisation of the men too (other than Arun) is inadequate.
It is hard to imagine how Midhun Manuel Thomas managed to assemble such
a talented cast of actors and still churn out such an average film. Wayne is a
natural, Varghese and Indrans are brilliant comics given a good script, but all
three are bereft of any spark in this film. The women artistes are lost to the
cliched, superficial writing of their characters.
The only one here who makes some sort of a mark with his performance is
the attractive Saiju Kurup, even though Prasad
too is a stereotype.
Alamara starts off brimming with possibilities and laughter, but peters out early
on under the weight of its commonplaceness. Perhaps this scanty script should
have been locked up in the cupboard of the title and left there until someone
thought of a way to rev it up.
Rating
(out of five stars): *
CBFC Rating (India):
|
U
|
Running time:
|
131 minutes
|
This
review has also been published on Firstpost:
Poster
courtesy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alamara
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