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Release
date:
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April 25,
2019
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Director:
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B.C. Naufal
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Cast:
Language:
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Dulquer Salmaan,
Vishnu Unnikrishnan, Salim Kumar, Soubin Shahir, Samyuktha Menon, Nikhila
Vimal, Renji Panicker, Bibin George, Suraj Venjaramoodu, Lena,
Akshara Kishor, Sunil Sukhada, Dileesh Pothan, Dharmajan Bolgatty, Hareesh
Perumanna, Arun Kurian
Malayalam
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It must be tough
being Dulquer Salmaan. On the one hand, you are a fine actor keen to work in
intelligent films and be a part of the Malayalam industry’s increasing ability
to make blockbusters out of sensible cinema. On the other hand, you have the
looks and personality to possibly pull off those stereotypical larger-than-life
characters that the senior male megastars of your industry, including your Dad,
have played for decades and that continue to earn crores. The factors that
recently persuaded your usually unconventional contemporary Nivin Pauly to
waste himself on Mikhael must be at
play in your life too. I can only imagine a zillion voices trying to coax you
to go the way of The Great Father, Lucifer and Mikhael.
Hear ye Your Royal
Cuteness, Your Majesty Prince of the Malayalam Realm, Explorer of Kingdoms
Beyond, Actor Par Excellence, Knight of the Handsome Face and Sweet Smile, if Oru Yamandan Premakadha reveals anything
to a long-time viewer of your work, it is that the likes of Ustad Hotel, Kammatipaadam and Kali are
your natural habitat – your reluctance to head in the opposite direction shows.
Readers should not
misunderstand: to be fair to Oru Yamandan
Premakadha (A Massive/Powerful Love Story), it is far from being the
excruciating experience that The Great
Father, Lucifer and Mikhael were. When it gets loud it is
not as loud, when it is clichéd it is still not insufferable. What it is though
is neither here nor there.
Oru Yamandan Premakadha (OYP) is an obvious effort by writers
Bibin George and Vishnu Unnikrishnan (who earlier collaborated on Amar Akbar Anthony and Kattappanayile Rithwik Roshan) along
with director B.C. Naufal to be ruminative while trying to achieve the
magnitude of Mollywood’s megabucks formula films. Sorry gentlemen, but those
ruminations are downright ridiculous and the shot at appearing thoughtful is in
any case overshadowed by the attempt to scale up.
Dulquer Salmaan /
DQ’s decision to pick this film is at one level inexplicable, because it truly
is a silly script. At another level though, when viewed solely in the context
of its tenor and the size of its canvas, the choice suggests a hesitation to go
all-out low-key like his colleague Fahadh Faasil, even as he steers clear of
formulaic rubbish.
DQ plays OYP’s Lallu, the happy-go-lucky son of a
rich lawyer
(Renji Panicker). The young man cares nothing for
the comforts his father’s wealth can buy. He prefers leftovers from a friend’s
kitchen over food from an expensive hotel, paints houses instead of opting for
a high-flying corporate career of the sort his younger brother (Arun Kurian)
has gone in for, and hangs out with men who his Dad considers below their
station.
Lallu has three
constant companions. Teny (Vishnu Unnikrishnan) earns a living as a bad karaoke
singer on the streets and is blind. The elderly widowed alcoholic Panjikuttan
(Salim Kumar) is a house painting contractor. Soubin Shahir plays a man anxious
to hook up with any woman who will have him.
All the girls in
town have been smitten by Lallu since he was a boy, but Lallu was and is
determined only to be with a woman with whom he shares a “spark” at first
sight. One such angelic creature does come along at one point, but the film has
meandered about for sooooo long till then and everything that follows
thereafter is so stupid that it is impossible to care.
At first there are
a few laughs to be had at the expense of Lallu and his buddies. Pretty soon,
however, the humour peters out and the script keeps jumping from one
unconnected thought to another, feeling quite vacuous after a while. If the
idea is to dwell on the many unexpected and unexplained cross connections in
human relations, to make a point that even the most seemingly insignificant
person serves a purpose in life, then the point is poorly made. If the idea is
to tickle our funny bones, then it barely works.
OYP is filled with running jokes that range from
funny-at-first-but-ruined-by-repetition to downright unfunny, distasteful
and/or dull, dull, dull. Like the thread about a roadside eatery owner (Hareesh
Perumanna) who is so bad at Maths that he cannot calculate what his patrons owe
him and therefore does not charge them. Yawn. Or that other thread involving a
jobless twosome (Dharmajan Bolgatty is one of them) seated outside and
talking non-stop. Yawn. Or the emaciated-looking fellow who struggles to catch
fish and who is
incessantly taunted for his skinniness, which
includes being addressed as “onangiya sraavey”
(dried-up shark). Err, nasty! Or Lallu’s repeated use of “omana kutti” in place of “ok”. Umm, no ya, trying too hard to be
cho-chweet and cash in on the actor’s own omana-kuttan-ness.
As for Lallu’s full name that is revealed only in the final scene, it is such a
yawn, yawn, yawn. Some of these motifs have potential, but the
writers fail to flesh them out well.
There are other
more grave refrains in OYP that are
no doubt meant to be profound, but are no less ineffectual. Like the one
featuring the villainous Davis (Bibin George), a mysterious chap with a
physical disability who is haunted by Mommy issues and who keeps appearing,
disappearing and reappearing. Whatever.
Then there is the
passing reference to a “vanitha mathil” (women’s wall), the third time
in a month now that I have heard a Malayalam film make a wisecrack about the
human chain formed in Kerala earlier this year as a symbol of solidarity in the
women’s rights movement. Unlike the misogynistic potshots in Mera Naam Shaji and Madhuraraja, the mention in OYP
is not cutting – it is meaningless. Still, the fact that the mathil is
repeatedly being brought up in popular culture with pretended nonchalance
indicates just how much it has disturbed the men of this patriarchal industry.
There is a separate and long discussion to be had here.
That said,
everything that is wrong with OYP – including its rather bizarre, mixed-up
comment on the (un)importance of education – is put
in the shade by the writers’ deathly serious conviction that a human being
could fall deeply in love with someone they have only seen in a photograph.
This is not portrayed as a mere attraction but as a profound, life-altering
love.
The supporting cast
of OYP is packed with familiar faces,
but in the face of such uninspiring writing, most deliver generic performances.
Suraj Venjaramoodu, Lena
and Dileesh Pothan invest more of themselves in the
film than it deserves. Two striking women who have already proved that they
are solid artistes – Nikhila Vimal (Njan Prakashan) and Samyuktha Menon (Theevandi)
– are squandered here as showpieces in a
plot pinned entirely on the male protagonist.
DQ looks good in lungis and is charming of course, but even his charm cannot
hold up nearly three hours of exhausting wanderings. Your Royal Handsomeness,
whatchadoin' with this lousy script? A better name for it would have been Oru
Mundane Premakadha.
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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165 minutes
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This review has also been published on Firstpost:
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