REVIEW 705: CHILDREN’S PARK

Release date:	Kerala: June 5, 2019 Delhi: June 14, 2019
Director:	Shafi
Cast: Language:	Sharafudheen, Vishnu Unnikrishnan, Dhruvan, Joy Mathew, Hareesh Kanaran, Gayathri Suresh, Manasa Radhakrishnan, Sowmya Menon, Shivaji Guruvayoor Malayalam and Tamil with some Hindi

Maybe there is something to be said for a film that is intermittently funny but tells an ordinary story in an otherwise ordinary fashion, making it hard to remember what it was about five minutes after stepping out of the hall. Whatever that something is, I will try to find it as I write this review of Children’s Park.

Director Shafi and writer Raffi’s Children’s Park is centred around three crooks, a get-rich-quick scheme involving an orphanage and the old man who once ran it. The dubious trio’s team-up occurs when Rishi’s late father ignores his son in his will and leaves a bulk of his wealth to this home for the parentless called Children’s Park. Through a series of circumstances, some of their making and some not, Rishi (played by actor Dhruvan), his best friend Jerry (Vishnu Unnikrishnan) and the small-time politician’s aide Lenin Adimala (Sharafudheen) end up running the place.

You know from the word go that the threesome will ultimately be reformed by their new-found love for the children. That in itself is no reason to write off the film, because sometimes what comes between a beginning and a predictable finale can be rewarding enough. Children’s Park has its moments, all of them pivoted on humour and the comic timing of Unnikrishnan and Sharafudheen, but these comedic patches and dialogues are not sufficient compensation for the largely hackneyed nature of the narrative.

For a start, the film’s writer treats the children like   background scenery throughout until they become crucial in the closing fight scenes. Before that happens, there is absolutely nothing to remember them by – no conversations, no effort at characterisation, nothing. This is contrary to the expectations set up by the really loooong opening song played entirely over visuals of children.

Mention of that number brings to mind Children’s Park’s odd attitude to language. The song is in Hindi, there are several extended, important scenes featuring a gangster named Muthupaandi who converses with his gang only in Tamil, and when the children speak in the end they too speak in Tamil – neither the song, nor these verbal exchanges are subtitled, which means a viewer of this film will fully understand it only if they are proficient in three languages. If the producers are not interested in attracting a non-Malayalam-speaking audience with English subtitles, that is their choice, but at the very least there should have been Malayalam subtitles for the Hindi and Tamil portions out of consideration for the primary target audience (meaning: Malayalam speakers) who spent money on tickets for what we were told is a Malayalam film.

 

The women of Children’s Park are only slightly less showpiece-like than the children. Their sole purpose in the plot is to give the male leads one good-looking female human each to fall in love with. 

All the fun in the film is to be had from the comicality of Jerry, Lenin and the artistes playing them. Vishnu Unnikrishnan took centre stage as an actor with Kattappanayile Rithwik Roshan in 2016 and is an excellent comic. Sharafudheen has a very likeable personality.

Rishi is played by Dhruvan, the least charismatic, least interesting of the three actors, and frankly I think it is a measure of Kerala’s white skin obsession that he gets described as a “glamour boy” by another character. Dhruvan first drew attention in a terribly amateurish film called Queen (2018) that felt and looked like something kindergarten children might create. In terms of production quality and writing, Children’s Park is a big step up from Queen but Dhruvan fails to add any spark whatsoever either to Rishi or the film.

That said, even Unnikrishnan and Sharafudheen can carry Children’s Park only so far and no further. The often entertaining Hareesh Kanaran plays the cook at the orphanage, but the humour developed around him is too juvenile and the actor himself, perhaps because of that, is off colour.

There is a running joke throughout Children’s Park revolving around two gluttons who run a dhaba. It works only once in the film, and that is in the way their food obsession is woven into the climax, but for the rest it is just boringly repetitive. The fact that it does click in that solitary instance is a reminder of Shafi’s comic potential. But as with his last film Oru Pazhaya Bomb Kadha (2018), that potential remains unfulfilled here in Children’s Park because he is just not trying enough and seems satisfied with rolling out cliché after cliché such as that ho-hum Me Too wisecrack and the mindless placement of pretty women as props. In earlier works such as his 2002 blockbuster Kalyanaraman, at least he served up enough laugh-out-loud moments of nonsense to tide over the episodic plotline and clichés. That film may have been loud and garish, but at least we got to giggle over nutty lines like “Thalararuthe Ramankutty, thalararuthe”.

To be fair to Children’s Park, it is better than Oru Pazhaya Bomb Kadha. The occasional humour, Sharafudheen and Unnikrishnan are its saving graces (though I must say I am already tired of the way the latter’s characters keep dissing his own looks), but even they cannot change Children’s Park’s overall impact as an unremarkable, unmemorable film.

Rating (out of five stars): *1/2

CBFC Rating (India):	U
Running time:	164 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/childrens-park-movie-review-occasional-humour-and-sharafudheen-save-a-largely-non-descript-orphanage-saga-6823011.html

Poster courtesy:

https://www.facebook.com/childrensparkmovieofficial/

REVIEW 485: SAKHAVU

Release date:	April 14, 2017
Director:	Sidhartha Siva
Cast: Language:	Nivin Pauly, Althaf, Aishwarya Rajesh, Binu Pappu, Gayathri Suresh, Aparna Gopinath, Sreenivasan, Musthafa, Tony Luke Kocherry, Santhosh Keezhattoor       Malayalam

A month after Tom Emmatty’s Oru Mexican Aparatha saluted Communism with a tale of the violent rivalry between student political organisations in Kerala, Sidhartha Siva’s Sakhavu (Comrade) comes to theatres to tell us what makes a true comrade. This one stars Nivin Pauly in a double role – as Krishna Kumar a.k.a. Kichchu, whose membership of the student outfit SFK is solely driven by his ambitions for himself; and as the younger version of a veteran Communist leader called Krishnan, willing to give up his life for workers’ rights. 

If you are not disposed to watch films opposed to your views, be warned: Sakhavu’s heart beats for Communism and it does not pretend otherwise. What works in its favour is that it does not allow its affection for Kerala’s old-time Marxists to turn into propaganda and falsehoods. It helps too that Pauly gets truckloads of screen time from start to finish.

The leading man’s charm dominates the first half of Sakhavu, which is devoted to Krishna Kumar’s shamelessly selfish plans that he has no qualms sharing with his friend and associate Mahesh played by Althaf. The interactions between these two are a hoot, not the least because there is no exaggeration here: their comedy mocks our bizarre and troubling reality, we have all been stung by hypocrites in politics who pretend to serve the people while serving themselves instead.

Siva’s smooth writing of these passages is bolstered by Pauly and Althaf’s spanking on-screen chemistry and comic timing. Althaf in particular is ROFLMAO-worthy (yes, that is a word) each time he opens his mouth to speak.

Sadly though, he virtually disappears in the second half, which goes back in time to the younger Krishnan’s battles on behalf of workers. This part is often thoughtful and thought-provoking, yet loses its way for various reasons. First, it stretches itself especially with the needless insertion of full-length songs in a narrative that could have done without them (the problem is not with Prashant Pillai’s numbers but that they have been used in their entirety).

Besides, the tone and politics of the second half contrast too sharply with the preceding portion.

Krishna Kumar’s story works because it takes a critical view of politics per se and Communist politicians in particular. Krishnan’s saga, however, is uncritical and one-dimensional, inhabiting a world divided simplistically between good workers and horrible bosses. The former are all unequivocally saintly folk whose actions must never be questioned, the latter are tarred with one stroke of the writers’ brush as exploitative, evil and cruel.

The film also reveals a prejudice evident in many Malayalam films where the outsider, especially the north Indian outsider, is viewed through a lens of othering if not outright suspicion. The one significant north Indian character in Sakhavu, a tea plantation and factory manager played by the attractive Tony Luke Kocherry, is a nasty piece of goods with no redeeming qualities. (Aside: the factory signboard bears the surname “Mehta” but the spelling “Mehatha” is used on a document the owner is shown signing – if this was not an instance of casualness and there is a deeper meaning here instead, I confess it was lost on me.)

These are issues particularly worth raising in a film that wears its conscience on its sleeve.

Still, there is no question that Sakhavu is well intentioned and serves its purpose with the mirror it holds up to politicians and young political aspirants, showing us in Sakhavu Krishnan and Krishna Kumar the contrast between the rare idealist and the insincere wannabe.

(Spoiler alert) One of the highlights of Sakhavu is Pauly, who slips into two characters and three distinct looks with such ease that after watching the film I went looking for the name of a third actor on the Internet, only to be reminded of the magic that can be worked when a talented actor and skilled make-up artist team up. (Spoiler alert ends)

Pauly is surrounded in this film by a strong supporting cast, including many familiar faces in tiny roles. Aishwarya Rajesh reminds us of her innate charisma in her performance as Sakhavu Krishnan’s wife Sakhavu Janaki, although she is poorly served by the make-up team in her senior avatar. The old Janaki’s youthful skin is a surprising let-down in a film where another young actor has been rendered almost unrecognisable by intelligent ageing make-up.

It is tempting to look past the follies of Sakhavu because so much of what it says resonates in the troubling, divisive times we live in, far beyond a discussion about the loss of Communist ideals. I watched the film in a packed west Delhi hall where the cheering audience’s love for Pauly seemed to rival their love for comrade-ery. They clapped loudly and repeatedly through Sakhavu Krishnan’s dialoguebaazi. To be honest, I too was tempted to let out a whoop of delight when Krishnan refused to reveal his surname to a wealthy landowner, saying that instead of being known by his caste and religion, he wished to be known by what his chosen first name – “Sakhavu” – indicated about him.

Sakhavu does not have the natural ease of Sidhartha Siva’s National Award-winning Ain from 2014 nor is it as thoroughly consistent as his sweet little Kochavva Paulo Ayyappa Coelho from last year, but it has its merits. Siva seems to have his heart in the right place, and he does, after all, make the point he sets out to make here, aided by one of the most interesting male stars of the present generation.

  

Rating (out of five stars): **1/2

CBFC Rating (India):	U
Running time:	164 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/sakhavu-movie-review-comedy-nivin-pauly-are-stars-of-this-faltering-ode-to-a-communist-ideal-3386740.html

Poster courtesy: https://www.facebook.com/Movie.Sakhavu/