Calendar

Malayalam movie makers have a penchant for movie titles totally unrelated to the story or the theme. As audience used to these antics, we the faithful viewers of Malluwood never question their intentions, just do our duty and watch each movie and offer our scathingly critical reviews of each one.

Calendar is one such gem of a title. I have no clue what a calendar has to do with this movie 'specially that it didn't have to do with gazillion Malayalam movies released so far. Ok, let us not get riled up about the title, I was just bringing to your attention an interesting fact about Malayalam cinema.

Calendar brings back some old faces from the eighties - Zarina Wahab and Prathap Pothen, with youngsters Navya Nair and Prithviraj and the forever young Mukesh. I had no clue where the movie was going till the very end. Even then I had to read a review to understand what it had been trying to say all along. I wonder why Zarina Wahab said yes to the role, probably she was told she was the central character and they were telling the truth. Only after they made the entire film did they realize they had veered so far off course that it was now impossible to get back.

The story could've been told straight-forward, but emphasis on certain characters where it was not needed, getting caught up in trivial issues, blowing up events totally unrelated to the development of the theme saw to it that the movie lost its way from the very beginning. Mahesh the actor turned director has created a veritable avial of a movie from which it is hard to save him.