REVIEW 794: MALAIKOTTAI VAALIBAN

Release date:	January 25, 2024
Director:	Lijo Jose Pellissery
Cast:	Mohanlal, Katha Nandi, Sonalee Kulkarni, Manoj Moses, Danish Sait, Hareesh Peradi, Sanjana Chandran, Manikandan R. Achari
Language:	Malayalam

 

Malaikottai Vaaliban features some of the most sensational images and sound ever created for the Indian screen. Sadly though, it is proof that visual and aural stimulation alone do not guarantee greatness. Writer-director Lijo Jose Pellissery’s new venture is a feast for the eyes and ears, but it is also stretched to nearly three hours with a plot and character graphs undeserving of that length. This unfortunate combination gives the film its defining characteristic: its soullessness. 

 

Starring Mohanlal as the eponymous protagonist, Malaikottai Vaaliban is a tale of a legendary warrior in an unspecified age gone by. Vaaliban travels across the land in an unassuming bullock cart with his foster parent, Ayyanar (Hareesh Peradi), and the latter’s son, Chinnappaiyyan (Manoj Moses). When they reach a village or town, Chinnappaiyyan announces their arrival with loud proclamations about Vaaliban’s past exploits. At the first stop that we see, Vaaliban vanquishes a local muscle man with more ease than Sunny Deol uprooting a handpump from the ground or Superman stopping a speeding train with bare hands. His confrontations get increasingly more challenging, but none equal an enemy he encounters who combats him through underhand means. 

 

With deliberate ambiguity about the time and place in which this story unfolds and the ethnicity of those among whom it is set, Pellissery makes it clear that he wishes to transport us to a mythical world where cultures, races and even geography cannot be pinned down. Most of the characters speak Malayalam, but at at least one arid location, there are faces in the crowd that look more like the weather-beaten visages found in the Thar or Kutch or in the dustbowls of Haryana. The dancer Rangapattinam Rangarani has a Tamil-sounding name but facial features more familiar in west or north India, her attire and jewels seem inspired by Maharashtra, and she is played by the Marathi film star Sonalee Kulkarni. Katha Nandi who is cast as Chinnappaiyyan’s lover Jamanthipoova is Bengali and looks it, while the Kannada cinema actor Danish Sait steps into the role of Vaaliban’s foe Chamathakan. In most films, this mix ‘n’ match might have been random, but in Malaikottai Vaaliban it feels deliberate considering everything else going on here.   

 

At one point in this Malayalam language ecosystem, characters break into a Hindi song. The story also includes a brutal European coloniser king with a name rooted in present-day UK but speaking a language from mainland Europe. 

 

This heterogeneity is attractive for a while. The cast is immensely likeable and immersed in the theatrics required of them as they surrender themselves to Pellissery’s vision headlined by the all-round splendour emanating from the screen. Those grand shots of vast barren terrain, a rust coloured stole with a sequinned trim being dragged dramatically on the ground, the golden lights of a crowded bazaar in the night, a primary character introduced through shadow play, a crimson-dominated palette that matches the blood splashed across a stone wall at one point, a Colosseum-like arena (more Game of Thrones than Gladiator) and bird’s eye views of human bodies dancing, fighting, advancing towards each other – they are all framed with loving attention to each dot, line and tint on cinematographer Madhu Neelakandan’s colossal canvas, complemented by Gokuldas’ art direction and costumes by Sujith Sudhakaran and Ratheesh Chammravattom. 

 

Malaikottai Vaaliban’s soundscape – with sound design by Renganaath Ravee and music by Prashant Pillai – is just as fabulous. Its signature refrain resembles a male mob letting out their breath in a collective whoosh. 

 

Each of these elements is spectacular as an independent entity, but when woven together, the overall package feels self-indulgent after a while with too much use of slow motion, too many aerial shots and too little substance in the script written by P.S. Rafeeque and Pellissery. People here are treated less like people and more like props, epitomised by the sinful under-utilisation of Manikandan R. Achari in a bit part as a jailed slave.

 

As the thinly sketched characters begin to weigh the narrative down, these embellishments are exposed as just that: embellishments, trying to convince us that there is more to Malaikottai Vaaliban than its luminous epidermal layer. Truth: there is not. I kept willing myself to be drawn into the story being told, but an overwhelming sense of tedium made that impossible. 

 

Like Deepak D. Menon’s painterly portraits of scenery, including one that “should be framed for museum display” as I wrote in my review of Padavettu (2022), a zillion moments in Malaikottai Vaaliban ought to be frozen as stills for the walls of prestigious galleries. A shot of concentric circles of humans in this film is surpassed in its beauty in recent Malayalam cinema only by Rajeev Ravi’s compositions for Thuramukham (2023). Malayalam films are known for delivering world-class camerawork even on tiny budgets, but these three films, regrettably, prioritise/d visual appeal over characterisation. Malaikottai Vaaliban is the cinematic equivalent of a gorgeous, lifeless mannequin rather than the pulsating life form that a quality film always is.

 

Pellissery has created abstract art earlier too, but unlike the seminal Nanpakal Nerathu Mayakam (2023), here we get abstractness for the heck of it. His influences and references in Malaikottai Vaaliban are as disparate as they come, ranging from Westerns to samurai cinema, conventional Indian action drama – the sort with outlandish stunts performed by omnipotent heroes exemplified by Rajinikanth – and even Tinkle Comics. The predatory Chamathakan, for one, comes across as a human cousin of the jackal Chamataka from my favourite Tinkle series, Kalia the Crow. Pellissery also replicates a scene from that most famous of Spaghetti Western-inspired Indian films, Sholay: the one in which Gabbar forces Basanti to dance on shards of glass to save Veeru. 

 

A game of Spot The Cultural References is not stimulus enough to stay awake through Malaikottai Vaaliban though. The only character whose skin we are allowed to look past is Ayyanar, but by the time that happens, the film is in its finale. 

 

Vaaliban says at one point: “What the eye has seen is the truth. What has not been seen is a lie.” The lines that ensue and a disclosure by a prominent character indicate a Rashomon Effect not visible within the space of this single film but over a span of at least two. Yes, there’s a sequel (the announcement comes in Malaikottai Vaaliban itself). I’ll explain vaguely to avoid spoilers: until the point in his life at which this film ends, Vaaliban had believed a certain something that he was told; we believed what he believed; but the events in this film are being recounted after he learnt the truth, which will now be revealed to us in Malaikottai Vaaliban 2. Sort of. I think.

 

Interesting idea, but it comes too late in the day to save Malaikottai Vaaliban 1. So am I looking forward to Part 2? Not really. There’s not enough coffee in the world...  

Rating (out of 5 stars): 2   

 

Running time:

155 minutes

 

Poster courtesy: IMDB 

REVIEW 793: NERU

Release date:	December 21, 2023
Director:	Jeethu Joseph
Cast:	Mohanlal, Anaswara Rajan, Priyamani, Siddique, Santhi Maya Devi, K.B. Ganesh Kumar, Sreedhanya, Jagadish, Aditi Ravi, Nandhu
Language:	Malayalam with English

 

Sara Mohammed (Anaswara Rajan) is an artist who is blind. When Sara is home alone one day, she is raped by a stranger. She gathers her wits about her during the assault, and much to the surprise of the police, is later able to identify the attacker despite her inability to see. 

 

It is an intriguing concept, and with Jeethu Joseph directing Mohanlal in the role of Sara’s lawyer Vijayamohan, it is hard not to have sky-high expectations after their team-ups for Drishyam 1&2. 

  

Neru (Truth) is not in the league of the Drishyams – its writing is not as refined. It also does not match up to the naturalistic genius or finely tuned politics of that other fantastic recent Malayalam legal saga, Ratheesh Balakrishnan Poduval’s Nna, Thaan Case Kodu (2022). And its courtroom drama dips into several tropes of the genre – a down-and-out lawyer re-donning his robes for what seems like a lost cause, a bumbling lawyer (Nandhu) whose clumsiness serves to underline the leading man’s skills, and so on. Still, the question of whether Vijayamohan will ultimately trump his insecurities and triumph over his rivals, the pleasure of seeing Mohanlal in a part shorn of macho posturing, Sara’s resilience, her parents’ supportive attitude and Anaswara’s measured performance make this a special film in its own right. 

 

Mohanlal’s filmography has for decades been dominated by hyper-masculinity and omnipotent heroes. So when he chooses to play a man who wears his vulnerability on his sleeve, the character’s significance extends beyond the boundaries of this storyline. 

 

Neru is about a system teetering on the precipice of letting a woman down, a system redeemed by a few good souls. Vijayamohan had withdrawn from practising law after a setback years back. He remains a respected legal expert. The rapist, Michael Joseph, is the son of a Mumbai-based industrialist. Realising that the public prosecutor is messing up the case and that the accused’s wealth can buy almost anyone, the senior policeman Paul Varghese (K.B. Ganeshkumar) goes out of his way to help Sara. Paul and a zealous young advocate, Ahaana (Santhi Maya Devi), persuade Vijayamohan to don his robes again, thus setting up a confrontation between him and the reputed, unethical defence lawyers Rajashekhar (Siddique) and his daughter Poornima (Priyamani).

 

Written by Santhi Mayadevi and Jeethu, Neru benefits from the duo’s background. Santhi is a lawyer in addition to being an actor-writer, Jeethu has a knack of getting the best out of one of Malayalam cinema’s biggest ever stars. Their joint effort results in a film that remains engaging till the end even though the culprit is revealed at the start. The suspense in the script lies elsewhere. 

 

Neru is a showcase primarily for Mohanlal, as such films tend to be, but the writers have had the good sense not to entirely neglect the other actors and characters. Though Sara is not developed as fully as Vijayamohan, she is for a change conceived as a regular person, not a helpless simpering woman nor a warrior queen avenging her rape in the way women survivors do in fantastical worlds routinely created by men writers. She is tough even if hurting, spirited even if traumatised. She is also an illuminating example of a survivor who is doubted because she kept her cool, although if she had not she would undoubtedly have been asked, “Well, where’s the proof?”

 

It is a relief to see Mohanlal in a part that allows him to focus on his craft instead of a swagger. He gives a moving rendition of a lawyer who acknowledges his courtroom phobia and ultimately comes into his own. When Vijayamohan says, “I lost that touch. I am not confident anymore,” the actor ensures that the pain in his character’s voice is under-played yet palpable. Mohanlal makes Vijayamohan’s transformation almost indiscernible in the way only he can when at his best. 

 

Priyamani’s character is just outlined, but her striking personality leaves a mark on Neru. It is nice to see her given visibility in this narrative, but she deserves a better-written role. 

 

Surrounded by accomplished and charismatic veterans, the seven-year-old-in-films Anaswara not only holds her own but lends tremendous maturity to Sara. 

 

Obviously it is essential to ask why Indian cinema routinely gives centrality to Vijayamohans and not Saras, to men who are allies of women rather than to women survivors themselves. Usually, male leads in these films become saviours and the films themselves are guilty of a condescending gaze on the woman. The reason why Neru escapes that label is that it views Sara through a lens of empathy and solidarity, not pity, and gives space to her story and her strength – even if not primacy. The film also gives her greater interiority than most such films do and does not patronise her.

 

Neru trips up on the latter front towards the end though, when Sara stands before Vijayamohan with hands folded and head bowed, and the camera zeroes in on this exchange. 

 

Symbolism is crucial to cinema. In Indian culture, a Namaskaram/ Namaste/ Namaskar/ Namaskara is a traditional greeting, but the physical gesture with palms meeting has various meanings here and elsewhere – humility, resignation, supplication, worship or gratitude. In a cinematic universe replete with male saviours, in an industry that routinely marginalises women in stories and discards women actors while creating circumstances conducive to megastardom and longevity for men like Mohanlal, Sara pressing her palms together and lowering her head is more than a thank you.

 

To avoid even a hint of a saviour vibe it was vital for Vijayamohan and Sara to be shown as equals, and for Mohanlal-Anaswara to stand shoulder to shoulder at all times. In that moment, they do not. 

 

The bow in Neru harks back to a Dalit folding her hands before a Brahmin ally, a policeman, in Article 15 (Hindi, 2019) or another Dalit folding her hands before an upper-caste ally, a lawyer, in Jai Bhim (Tamil, 2021). Both were empathetic films. In each case, the gesture – a fleeting one – was made by a member of a subjugated group, aimed at a member of a dominant group played by the marquee name in the cast, and when juxtaposed against the larger socio-political context in which these films were made, subtracted, even if marginally, from their anti-dominance messaging.

 

Just like the passing mention of a past relationship between Vijayamohan and Poornima. Their link is superfluous to Neru’s plot, and is yet another example of a standard practice among male stars in India who seek to prove their eternal magnetism by ensuring that a woman partner is featured in every story to be played by an actor vastly younger than they are rather than a woman of their own generation. In this case, Priyamani is almost a quarter century younger than Mohanlal. 

 

These asides are completely unnecessary in an otherwise entertaining, sensible film. 

 

Neru approaches the theme of rape largely with understanding, although it could have done without the heightened maudlin music and repeated – albeit brief and not titillating – flashbacks to the assault on Sara. One scene sticks out like a sore thumb: the one in which Vijayamohan greenlights an idea that allows the unscrupulous Rajashekhar to be alone in a room with Sara, thus leaving him free to taunt and re-traumatise her. This decision is inconsistent with Vijayamohan’s sensitivity towards his client in the rest of Neru and his progressively improving presence of mind up to that point. The episode is obviously written for theatric effect, and is thoughtless considering that real-life activist lawyers lay considerable emphasis on prioritising a survivor’s mental well-being over all else whereas Vijayamohan’s move is viewed with an uncritical eye by the script. The scene took me back to an even worse one in Pink (Hindi, 2016) in which Amitabh Bachchan’s character badgers his own client, a sexual assault survivor, in the witness stand to make a point in court. 

 

Malayalam cinema tends to do language mixes well, epitomised by last year’s Thankam and Ariyippu in 2022. Neru is not brilliant like them, its dialogues in the courtroom are sometimes stilted, but the Malayalam-English blend at least fits the setting, characters and actors perfectly, barring the English lines written for Rajashekhar that don’t sit well at all with Siddique. 

 

Legal wranglings, extra-legal machinations and the surprises thrown up by Vijayamohan’s probe sustain interest in Nerueven with its flaws. This film is not Jeethu’s best, but may turn out to be his most important if it heralds a new phase in Mohanlal’s career. Neru is hopefully an indicator that after cringe-worthy outings arguably epitomised by Monster (2022) and Alone (2023) the actor has finally sensed the winds of change blowing through Malayalam cinema, as the other Big M did some years back. If my reading of his participation in this film is accurate, then it’s a turning point not just for his career but for his industry too, more so because Neru follows close on the heels of the excellent Kaathal in which Mammootty played a gay man in a heterosexual marriage. 

 

The two M’s are as mainstream as mainstream can be. It’s a joy to see them join hands with filmmakers who are resisting the wave of male fury currently sweeping across commercial Indian cinema of most languages. Neru belongs on the list of Malayalam films defying the national trend. 

 

Rating (out of 5 stars): 2.75   

 

Running time:

152 minutes

 

Poster courtesy: IMDB 

Still of Anaswara courtesy: Neru’s trailer 

ESSAY: THE ROMANCE OF CINEMA HALLS

Cinema in the time of COVID-19: an ode to the romance of movie halls and watching films with strangers

The sun was out but it was not uncomfortably warm. Vehicular pollution was not the mass murderer that it is today, so it was natural for my parents to take the kids along – as other families did that day – on the walk from South Extension to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Delhi, for a film show. I am not certain of the year (it has to be in the 1980s), but I do recall that happy holiday as we made the trek on a service road parallel to Ring Road, from home to an auditorium on the sprawling AIIMS campus to see Manjil Virinja Pookkal. 

My sister remembers the film, not the occasion. She was amused earlier today as I recounted details of the outing to her. Such as the fact that it was Dad’s hand I clung to, which means Mum was most likely carrying her in her arms. That the distance felt longer to my little legs than my cellphone’s GPS now tells me it is. And that the screening was organised by a now-long-gone club called Kairali Film Society, no trace of which I can find on the Internet. 

I suspect I can picture it as vividly as if it happened yesterday because this is my first ever memory of watching a film in a theatre. There had been other films before Manjil Virinja Pookkal, viewed with the family huddled around our black-and-white TV set in the days when Doordarshan was our only salvation. This was a different world though, and I remember it all. The mass of people in the hall. The weather outside. A coy Poornima Jayaram. The villainous Mohanlal. The title song about flowers that blossomed in the dew, that I most likely did not understand but instinctively found beautiful. 

Such pleasant reminiscences have been floating around in my mind in the weeks since the novel Coronavirus began keeping me away from one of my favourite haunts: movie halls. Much before the government declared a national lockdown due to COVID-19 (coronavirus disease), my cautious nature had prompted me to practise social distancing, heeding the advice of experts quoted in the global media. This means that March 2020 will go down in history (yes, I did say that, *inserts smart-ass emoji*) as perhaps the first month in a decade that I watched just three films in theatres – each one strictly for reviewing purposes. 

A lot has happened for film buffs since a tiny girl was mesmerised by the moving images on what felt like a colossal screen at AIIMS. Colour TVs came to India in the 1980s, satellite TV followed in the 1990s, over time the stubborn exhibition sector has opened up to a point where, sitting in Delhi, we can now watch films in multiple Indian and foreign languages, not English and Hindi alone, and in recent years, the advent of online streaming platforms has left us spoilt for choice. My work primarily involves writing on cinema, so obviously I am and I am required to be a voracious consumer of films. I have no reservations about watching them on cellphones, tablets, laptops or televisions, at festivals, premieres, previews, upon their theatrical release or online, but if my schedule and budget permit it, I would pick a cinema hall over every other available option any day.

There is something magical about sitting in a large darkened theatre, gazing at a giant screen, savouring the unexplainable, precious solitude of the movie-viewing experience even when watching with a crowd. To my mind, this is why people continue to fill theatres although we all now have cellphones, which makes us all, in a sense, potential theatre owners. This is why theatres will never die. 

When I am lost in a film, I often have a blinkered vision directed at the screen. Sometimes though, it is worth absorbing the sociology and psychology lessons on offer off screen and the pockets of drama among the audience. There was that one time in Gurgaon when a massive family including grandparents and kids turned up for the Hindi version of Delhi Belly, but after an eye full of male butt cracks and Tashi pleasuring his girlfriend, the entire platoon scurried out with many a “Chhee” and “Hawww” and exclamations of disgust. Clearly they had not bothered to check the certification (Delhi Belly was A-rated) or read reviews out of concern for the children in the group, but hey, let’s not take responsibility for our own irresponsibility. Clearly too, the multiplex management, like so many others in India, had not enforced the rating – if they had, children would not have got in in the first place.

Then there was that other time, when a group of what I assume to be Mommies brought a bunch of very small children to a single-screen complex in Delhi for My Super Ex-Girlfriend starring Uma Thurman. (Don’t judge me – I was there for work.) The kids were, understandably, bored by that dreadful film and started running up and down the aisle, until that first scene in which the protagonist has wild sex and ends up demolishing a bed. At that point the little ones froze in wonderment and one of them cried out at the top of his voice, words to this effect, “Mummy Mummy, voh apni boyfriend ko kyun maar rahi hai (Why is she beating her boyfriend)?” Mummy shushed him, the kids continued to be a nuisance to the rest of us, and the show went on.

Sometimes an audience seems like a microcosm of the world outside, sometimes inhabitants of a universe far away. In the summer of 2017, as the results for the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections were being announced, I headed out to watch the Malayalam film Oru Mexican Aparatha in a multiplex in a state bordering UP. While the sweep of UP by the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party was becoming evident, I was startled and then amused to hear audience members raising the Left’s favoured slogan, “Lal Salaam”, in support of Oru Mexican Aparatha’s Communist hero.

The research for my book, The Adventures of an Intrepid Film Critic (Om Books, 2012), included watching every single Bollywood film released in a theatre in the National Capital Region in one year. The project resulted in numerous occasions when I found myself alone in a theatre – because there are that many unknown, unmarketed films produced by the Mumbai-based film industry, some terrific, some terrible. Watching the good ones among them all on my own only served to underline for me the romance of the big screen and the reason why I became a critic: to inform people about great films they may not otherwise have heard of or considered watching.

My library of anecdotes – about empty and packed halls, fights I have had with managers to get them to start shows they were hoping to cancel because no one other than I had bought a ticket, parents who refuse to control their restless offspring, and couples making out – is a testament to the number of trips I make to a theatre in a week.

In recent weeks, as dread and uncertainty over COVID-19 have clouded our lives, as the lockdown appears to have unlocked further reserves of online hate, as those depressing images of the impoverished masses trudging hundreds of kilometers to their villages have been unleashed on us, I have, as always, taken refuge in reading, writing, films and TV shows. Now, more than ever before, I am grateful for the likes of Netflix. There is no getting away though from the fact that my glucose is community viewing in a theatre.

Where else can you watch a live show of a couple squabbling over whether or not they should give up on Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life? For the record, he wanted to leave, she wanted to stay as I gathered from the fact that they had a furious whispered exchange of words part way through the film, he stormed out, returned to coax her to leave, stormed out again, returned, then stormed out again, before giving up and sinking back into his seat because the young woman refused to budge.

A friend wrote on Twitter the other day that once the Coronavirus pandemic is over, he doubts he will ever again feel safe in teeming public places. Me? I am dying to get back – to hugging loved ones and holding hands, to walking down streets and train stations, to flights and the Delhi Metro, to scouring well-stocked markets and bustling malls. And of course, it goes without saying, to watching films in the dark with strangers at multiplexes.

This article was published on Firstpost on April 1, 2020:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/cinema-in-the-time-of-covid-19-an-ode-to-the-romance-of-movie-halls-and-watching-films-with-strangers-8213541.html

Photographs courtesy: Wikipedia

REVIEW 762: BIG BROTHER

Release date:	January 16, 2020
Director:	Siddique
Cast: Language:	Mohanlal, Sarjano Khalid, Mirnaa Menon, Arbaaz Khan, Gaadha, Honey Rose, Siddique, Anoop Menon, Vishnu Unnikrishnan, Asif Basra, Irshad, Tini Tom, Devan Malayalam

When a man has spent 24 years of his life behind bars, adjusting to the world outside would obviously be a challenge. Mohanlal plays one such chap, 40-something-year-old Sachidanandan who was convicted for murder as a teenager and two dozen years later is now set for life outside a prison cell.

You heard that right: Lalettan, who turns 60 this summer, plays a character who has barely crossed 40 in Big Brother. That should have been the first warning sign that this film would turn out to be yet another embarrassing misadventure in the superstar’s filmography that has for at least a decade now been dominated by repetitive, unimaginative works desperately trying to convince audiences that he is forever young and forever attractive to women young enough to be his granddaughters.

Towards the latter end, Big Brother stars a baby-faced girl called Mirnaa Menon who falls for Sachidanandan and looks moony-eyed at him throughout a stereotypically shot song sequence in which she is dressed in flowy, frothy chiffon attire. You know the type of number that has been featured in formulaic commercial Indian cinema across language industries for about two decades? (Possibly to pre-empt all lampooning, the kid admirer’s feelings are described by one character as an instance of Stockholm Syndrome because of the circumstances in which she gets acquainted with Sachidanandan.)

Cliché is piled upon cliché, one dull turn of events is piled upon another in this film written and directed by Siddique.

Big Brother is about how Sachidanandan’s efforts to adjust to freedom are eclipsed by a faceless, omniscient drug kingpin called Edwin Moses. Why Moses is after him is a question the uninteresting answer to which comes in the climax. Through the inexorable 2 hours and 45 minutes that pass between the beginning and the end of this torturous film, we meet Sachidanandan’s brothers Vishnu (Anoop Menon) and Manu (Sarjano Khalid), Vishnu’s wife Vandana (Honey Rose), other family members with whom he is living and Manu’s girlfriend Gemini (Gaadha) in addition to three flunkeys played by Irshad, Tini Tom and Vishnu Unnikrishnan. The script gives none of these people anything to remember them by apart from the well-known stars playing some of them. And yes, I repeat in case you did not notice, little Sarjano Khalid from June has been cast as Sachidanandan’s brother in Big Brother, no doubt to further convince us of Lalettan’s eternal youth.

(Pause)

(Further pause)

Oops, Big Brother was such a sleeping pill that I dozed off while writing that last paragraph.

So where were we? Ah yes, Manu was instrumental in securing his elder sibling’s release from jail. When he and Gemini are attacked for unknown reasons by a violent gang, Sachidanandan is forced to circumvent the law to rescue the boy.

Another purportedly significant character in Big Brother is a north Indian cop played by Arbaaz Khan who has just been posted in southern India to hunt down Edwin Moses. This is the Bollywood actor’s Mollywood debut. Why Mollywood sought him out is a mystery. Khan brings nothing to this role except expressionlessness and gets nothing out of it except the challenge of delivering poorly written dialogues that awkwardly mix Hindi and English with Malayalam. Veteran actor Siddique too is cast in a pointless role in this pointless enterprise.

One of the few positives I could find in Big Brother is that stray Hindi dialogues are accompanied by Malayalam subtitles embedded in the print.

One of the few innovations I can recall from this film is the villain sending explosives-laden toy cars to chase the hero and his sidekicks in a godown. But that high lasts just for a few seconds. There is also a reference early on to an unusual natural ability Sachidanandan possesses. That too, after a while, plays little to no part in the proceedings. A rather sensational example of systemic police corruption revealed in the beginning again comes to nought.

For a film that is supposed to be a thriller, Big Brother offers zero excitement after the initial fleeting suspense over how the hero once used his extraordinary gift for an extraordinary purpose.

There is absolutely nothing by which to recommend Siddique’s Big Brother. Even Mohanlal’s acting here is meh, and considering how stiff-limbed he is, it is amusing to the point of being sad to see scenes in which he has to, among other things, single-handedly overpower a supervillain, fly through the air and send men flying with his fists.

Feel the “Lalhood” – that was the tagline flashed at the end of Big Brother’s trailer. Maybe “Lalhood” is a new word for the world’s most boring film.

Rating (out of 5 stars): 0.25

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	165 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/big-brother-movie-review-mohanlal-kicks-off-2020-with-the-worlds-most-boring-film-7915791.html

Posters courtesy: https://www.facebook.com/BigBrotherMovieOfficial/