REVIEW 727: BROTHER’S DAY

Release date:	September 6, 2019
Director:	Kalabhavan Shajohn
Cast: Language:	Prithviraj Sukumaran, Aishwarya Lekshmi, Madonna Sebastian, Prasanna, Vijayaraghavan, Prayaga Martin, Miya  Malayalam

A song called Thalolam Thumbippennale with the catchphrase Zing zig a zig zig plays at a birthday party right before the interval of the Malayalam film Brother’s Day. With no particular relevance to either the setting (Kerala) or the characters in the story (not one of them a Hindi bhaashi), the number begins with some Hindi lines. A few minutes earlier, a group of turbaned men had appeared but not said a word in a room where the hero was meeting a friend. A large group of similarly turbaned men turn up to back an ensemble of Malayali characters as they dance wildly to Thalolam Thumbippennale with moves that mimic the Bhangra. Those background figures are presumably Sikh, although the shape of their turbans shows very poor research on the part of the director. The movie maybe Malayalam and the actors all well-known Mollywood stars, but the song resembles one of those trite, large and loud Hindi/Punjabi wedding song ‘n’ dance numbers that Bollywood would once routinely and mindlessly chuck into films, numbers that are gradually – thankfully – now getting outmoded in Hindi cinema.

That scene exemplifies everything that is wrong with Brother’s Day: it is a poorly scripted film that does not bother with detailing, it is imitative, it is packed with clichés, it is not faithful to its roots, it aspires to be something that it is not but does not do enough homework to accurately be whatever that other thing is, and it lacks finesse. Such casualness is particularly galling because actor-turned-writer-director Kalabhavan Shajohn has assembled a fantastic cast for this project.

Brother’s Day stars Prithviraj Sukumaran as Ronnie whose work in the hospitality industry brings him in touch with a wealthy and happy-go-lucky elderly gentleman called Chandy (Vijayaraghavan) and his daughter Santa (Aishwarya Lekshmi). Ronnie is devoted to his sister (Prayaga Martin). Early on he bumps into a woman who has obviously been marked out by the script as a potential ‘love interest’ (Madonna Sebastian).

A character played by Prasanna runs a blackmailing racket with several accomplices, and is a constant mysterious presence in the background.

Multiple twists are forced into this thriller. Multiple sub-plots are thrown in to fill it out. Scenes are written and shot without much thought.

Sample this. A minor supporting character is introduced as a “Bangali” and is meant to be one of the numerous Bengali immigrants who can now be found working in Kerala – the actor playing this part, however, does nothing to camouflage his very pronounced Malayalam accent. 

Or sample this. Ronnie is shown standing on a pier confiding in a friend about his tragic past. He is so heart-broken that he sobs as he speaks. She seems like a considerate woman. Yet as he finishes his story and turns to her, the camera pulls out to show her turning her back on him and walking away in slow motion in an aerial shot that is visually grand but makes absolutely no sense. 

Or this. We learn at one point that Chandy’s daughter Santa is named after another character who was dear to him. Yet the film also features a scene from her childhood in which she is shown gazing at a group of people dressed in Santa Claus costumes accompanied by a couple of nuns, all of them gazing back at her one Christmas Day. Perhaps that was meant to be artistic and profound imagery, but in truth it is kind of laughable.

This is a film about extreme violence that fails to evoke any empathy for the survivors because they are so sketchily written. In fact, it does not seem to care much about them. They are just by-the-ways as Kalabhavan Shajohn obsesses over his primary preoccupations: making his villain intimidating and hero all-powerful. Among the instruments at his disposal is what seems like a sizeable budget for cinematography, but how does it help that Kerala looks picturesque through Jithu Damodar’s camera if the storytelling is so cold? And oh god, what is one to say about that over-emphatic background score?

 

The bad guy is a blackmailer, rapist and serial killer. He employs various means to ravage his victims. He is also assigned an ominous signature whistling tune and a vicious dog. Like him, Ronnie is filled with ideas for how to bash up and twist human bodies. Despite this, the action scenes come off looking limp.

Any entertainment to be drawn out of Brother’s Day comes entirely in the first half in the banter between Ronnie and his friend Munna played by Dharmajan Bolgatty. Of course it is all silly slapstick stuff but silly slapstick stuff never hurt anyone if it is inoffensive and you are in the mood for relaxation that does not exercise your brain too much. What does hurt is to see the gifted Prithviraj Sukumaran squander his talent on the generic thriller material that follows. When that happens in a film that also under-utilises the lovely Aishwarya Lekshmi and Madonna Sebastian, it is completely off-putting. After delivering excellent performances in substantial roles so early in her career with Njandukalude Nattil Oridavela, Mayaanadhi and Vijay Superum Pournamiyum, Ms Lekshmi’s decision to be a part of Brother’s Day either shows poor instincts or is a measure of the limited options available to women in Mollywood.

Towards the beginning of Brother’s Day, Ronnie references the Archangel Lucifer in what is clearly a bow to Prithviraj's directorial debut earlier this year. Lucifer starring Mohanlal, another recent film with a mythological title, the Nivin Pauly-starrer Mikhael, and last month’s Tovino Thomas-starrer Kalki that took its name from Hindu tradition, belong to a genre of men-centric Malayalam cinema characterised by intellectual pretentions that unwittingly underline their vacuousness, high-decibel music, assembly-line scripting and stereotypical camerawork designed to build up the leading men as larger-than-life creatures. The basic storylines may change but they fit a fixed template, the degree of over-statement may vary but the cinematic vision remains exactly the same. For instance, Brother’s Day does not get as raucous as Mikhael and Kalki, and – despite its inexplicable disinterest in the impact of violence on the human beings on its canvas – it is not as nauseating as those two films either.

Prithviraj Sukumaran is a powerful male star with a multitude of choices available to him, living in an era in which a quieter, gentler Malayalam cinema is winning hearts nationwide. He has done films like Koode that have showcased his acting brilliance. And then he settles for this pointless film?

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

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

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/brothers-day-movie-review-prithviraj-sukumaran-does-a-less-noisy-version-of-mikhael-7302221.html

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REVIEW 726: CHHICHHORE

Release date:	September 6, 2019
Director:	Nitesh Tiwari
Cast: Language:	Sushant Singh Rajput, Shraddha Kapoor, Varun Sharma, Tahir Raj Bhasin, Naveen Polishetty, Tushar Pandey, Saharsh Kumar Shukla, Prateik Babbar  Hindi

A present-day tragedy sends Annirudh Pathak (Sushant Singh Rajput) off in search of his best buddies from his youth. They were all students at India’s most prestigious engineering college about two decades back when they joined forces to get rid of the loser tag slapped on their hostel by the rest of the institution.

Anni gathers his gang – now older and many of them balding – around his son to recount their shenanigans from back then and convince the boy that winning is not everything, that the fight counts. At first Anni’s ex-wife Maya (Shraddha Kapoor), who was also their collegemate, is cynical about this strategy to lift the child’s spirits. She changes her mind though as the group gets deeper and deeper into their story and their young listener begins to get involved with these characters, some of who once went by the names Sexa, Acid, Mummy and Bevda.

Writer-director Nitesh Tiwari had his heart in the right place when he conceptualised this project. Chhichhore (The Childish Lot) is about an India that teaches youngsters to slog, compete and celebrate victory but almost never counsels them on how to handle defeat. It is a lesson that this country and its blinkered education system, pushy parents and mindless teachers sorely require. It is a lesson that sensible parents and forward-thinking teachers have long tried to propagate. The vehicle for this messaging needed to be less shaky though.

From the word go, Chhichhore’s 3 Idiots hangover is evident. That 2009 blockbuster by Raju Hirani was not without flaws – its take on education was simplistic and one-dimensional, it cast men in their late 30s and mid 40s as teenagers, and it trivialised rape in that horrid “balatkaar” speech. For the most part though, its humour was not insensitive, and one thing is for sure: 3 Idiots had its own voice. Chhichhore is a film in search of a voice that ends up looking, feeling and sounding all mixed up.

Too much about this film is uneven and confusing. For a start, how come the boys have aged when we meet them in the present day but Maya has not? The only change in her is that her attire and styling are less sassy and flouncy. From Western dresses and short hair the older Maya has switched to staid cotton saris, salwar suits and a boring bun. But her skin, hair, posture and gait remain unchanged. It is as if Team Chhichhore felt that unlike men, ageing women are not worthy of screen space.

Even Maya’s wardrobe and style in college are inexplicable. She has the appearance of a girl from a much earlier era than her male collegemates, perhaps the 1960s.

Not that the men fare much better in their senior avatar. With the years added to their lives, their hairlines recede but several of them continue to have skin as supple as a baby’s bottom.

These might have been excusable glitches if Chhichhore had got its tone right, but unfortunately the narrative never quite settles into doing its own thing. Both thematically and tonally, the film is trying to be what it is not throughout, borrowing heavily from 3 Idiots in terms of mood and even plot points. And the back and forth switches between the present and the past are just not effective.

What works in Chhichhore are the sports contests which do have an air of suspense about them, a considerable part of the banter between the friends in their younger days, and the energetic songs Control and Fikar Not (music: Pritam, lyrics: Amitabh Bhattacharya).

Nitesh Tiwari clearly has a talent for setting up battles in the sporting arena – he proved that in his last film, Dangal, and proves it again here. The many matches in Chhichhore, the boys’ hilarious immaturity and sharp tongues are often thoroughly entertaining. And while Maya remains a shadow in the background of the narrative that is anyway largely bereft of women, it is nice to see a Hindi film set in an environment where gender segregation is the norm but the hero’s wooing of the heroine is not noxious and stalkerish.

None of this is, however, enough to sustain Chhichhore. There are too many draggy patches in between, the acting is inconsistent, and the somewhat superficial messaging adds nothing to the “what matters is that you tried” line we have heard before.

The writing of Chhichhore (by Tiwari himself with Nikhil Mehrotra and Piyush Gupta) is so lacking in depth, and the direction so passionless, that it is hard to believe it is brought to us by the same person who made Dangal. Despite its sporadic bursts of humour, Chhichhore comes across as a half-hearted enterprise.

Rating (out of five stars): *3/4

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	146 minutes

A version of this review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/bollywood/chhichhore-movie-review-sushant-singh-rajput-ages-shraddha-kapoor-does-not-in-a-hotch-potch-with-a-3-idiots-hangover-7295001.html

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