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Release
date:
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Kerala: April 14, Delhi: May 11, 2018
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Director:
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Ramesh Pisharody
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Cast:
Language:
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Jayaram,
Kunchacko Boban, Anusree, Ashokan, Salim Kumar, Dharmajan Bolgatty, Joju
George, Mallika Sukumaran
Malayalam
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When the most
interesting part of a film is the sound of its title, it goes without saying
there’s a problem.
Ramesh Pisharody’s Panchavarnathatha (Five-Coloured Parrot)
is a carelessly assembled potpourri of ingredients, most of them unrelated to
each other and that title itself unrelated to pretty much everything that goes
on in the film. The odd part is that some individual elements in the mix have
immense potential. The cast, for one. Veteran actor Jayaram is a past master at
comedy, Kunchacko
Boban and supporting actors Anusree and Ashokan too
have solid comic timing, and Boban has such a genial screen presence that he
could raise the tolerability levels of even the worst project. Odder still, some
of the dialogues and situations in the pre-interval portion are genuinely
funny. While putting it all together though, Pisharody rambles so inexorably and
the scenes are so disconnected from each other that after a point I felt
embarrassed on his behalf.
The debutant
director cannot even hide behind the excuse of a terrible screenplay. He must
take most of the blame in that department too since he is the co-writer of this
project with Hari P. Nair.
Let me tell you the
story as best as I can…
Hmmm.
Thinking.
Thinking some more.
Trying to remember
it.
Trying some more.
No seriously, I am
not being clever here. It is truly hard to explain what Panchavarnathatha is about.
Oh okay, I got it,
I got it, I know what to say. Boban plays the Kerala politician and MLA Kalesh who
lacks the political acumen that made his late father a many-term MLA. His
mother (Mallika Sukumaran) and wife Chithra (Anusree) are convinced he will
lose his second election. To make matters worse, his closest
rival (Salim Kumar) gets up to all sorts of dirty tricks during their campaign.
Somewhere in his
constituency lives a mysterious man (played by Jayaram) who runs a pet shop
with exotic creatures in a house in a residential locality. These include –
c’mon guess – a panchavarna thatha!
Applause!
After the film has
wandered all over the place for what feels like forever, this enigmatic fellow
becomes firmly entrenched in Kalesh’s life. Then Dharmajan Bolgatty pops up out
of the blue. Then the election happens. Then Joju George pops up. Then it gets
sappy. Then there is a deep message because because ergo therefore hence, you
know?
At least the first
half offered some laughs here and there, the second half does not have even
that.
Somewhere in this
mess is a kernel of an idea for a kooky comedy about a motley group of madcaps
whose shenanigans throw up existential questions. Sadly, Messrs Pisharody and
Nair are not cut out for the job. The direction is lax, the pacing completely
off from the start and Panchavarnathatha
does not settle down at any point.
Jayaram’s character
wears a sacred thread across his chest, carries a rosary in his bag and says “inshallah” (god willing), which no doubt
is meant to make a profound point about the secular ideals of our nation’s
founding parents that are at risk from unscrupulous politicians. Whatever.
Nowhere is the film
within even touching distance of the idiosyncratic tone it is clearly aspiring
to achieve. This is most evident in the scene in which Kalesh and Jayaram’s
character ride a horse to Kochi airport since protestors are blocking motor
vehicles on the streets. In the hands of a more skilled director, this scene
could have been a hoot. Here though, all I could think of was why the horse was
walking with the gait of a camel and at the speed of a snail, and why a
considerable part of that scene was shot in a studio and obviously superimposed
on footage of fields and the city. Was permission
to shoot in the city not sought, or was it sought and not given?
The title track is
a foot-tapping number that has little to do with what goes on before or after
it. And while I enjoyed the potshot about Malayali crookishness woven into the
screenplay, what was not enjoyable was the casual inclusion of domestic
violence in the film’s humourscape. Kalesh keeps threatening to beat his wife,
at one point he actually pushes her off a swing and she falls on the floor, and
it is all meant to be haha hehe.
Panchavarnathatha is not the first Mollywood
film to treat intimate partner violence as a joke. It is hardly a consolation
that it takes itself even more lightly than it takes this sensitive issue.
Rating
(out of five stars): 1/2
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CBFC Rating (India):
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U
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Running time:
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148 minutes
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This review has also been published on Firstpost:
Poster
courtesy: https://www.facebook.com/PanchavarnathathaMovie/
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