Honeybee Its Trippin'

Youth does not always acknowledge or realize how being young looks good on them and how invigorating it is for the world to watch them shimmer, shine and rise. Honeybee…it’s Trippin’ as the title says is indeed a tripping ride through the kingdom of youth. 

Jean Paul Lal’s directorial debut is aimed straight at the box-office bull's eye. There will be talk about quality and content but with a song like ‘Neeyo’ capturing exploitative grace in slow motion with lithe young bodies tumbling over lyrical gun shots, I am sold. On screen I see that time and space in life where indiscernible love, gut-load of guns, inquisitive suitors, possessive brothers, platonic boy-friends, weirdly funny Kochi slang and NDEs in ocean are all justified – in the cauldron of boiling youth.

A generation ago, Lal.Jr’s Dad who was known as plain ‘Lal’ back then, now he is Lal.Sr, made his first movie with his friend and directorial partner Siddique. It was a movie that became a trend setter, beating out a new path – Ramji Rao Speaking showed us in 1989 that you can be young and hopeless yet emerge victorious on the other side whistling one of its chart topper songs. 

Almost a quarter century later (whoa, has it been that long!) HoneyBee  tries to find the same vein in new generation under the guise of kindling a love story to life. I could have done without the love story, but then there goes the plot, right? In fact Bhavana and Asif Ali – the leads are the ones who have the least juicy roles in the movie. The film belongs to its second benchers – Sreenath Bhasi, Baburaj, Balu, Vijay Babu and the beautifully handsome junkies. Fight sequences and chases on foot with its effective melding of slow motion and background music tells me Junior does know some tricks of the trade. It will be interesting to watch where he goes from here.

 Song: Neeyo

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Robinhood (Malayalam movie review)

The only reason you should watch Robinhood is Prithviraj. His good looks cuts like a knife, the rest of the movie is just 'knife'(kathi in Malayalam) if you can bear for 2.5 hours the way it will take repeated stabs at your intelligence.

Kochi, is the modern day Sherwood, ATM robbery is what Robinhood excels in these days. Traveling across 800 years of Robinlessness, the new Robin in the hood seems not only to have lost most of the characteristics of his namesake but also has inherited a few Dr.Jekyll/Mr.Hyde genes. He is an entrance tutor by day and a high-tech swindler by night. The rest of the cast is all high-tech as well, Naren is the flirtatious hacker computer whiz kid detective, Bhavana is the lead systems administrator and the only one who has a little less number of 1s and 0s in his system is Jayasurya's character who is the investigating IPS officer, but he has been to the famed Mussorie training camp and we all know who goes there, right?

The story is wrought with technical errors, which I'd not even dare to question because that'd be like insulting my intelligence and wasting my time. Yet I am grateful to director Joshiy, an old war horse of Malayalam cinema still going full steam ahead, that he used a young story which needed younger actors, thus giving them an opportunity. For once he restrained himself from casting M & M's for the leading roles, I mean he could've very well gone ahead and done that and malayali audience would have given 5 out 5 points for perfect casting. My guess is that Joshiy might have even lost some revenue having cast Prithvi and Naren, we need more directors like him who will make that gamble.

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