Take Off

Fiction is often created exploring the far-fetched what-ifs of life. But sometimes life outsmarts fiction, the improbable happens to the everyday human. You, me or our neighbor next door becomes the new story without any intention of being so. Most times these otherwise inconceivable events are not usually pleasant in nature. It stretches the limits of human spirit and makes heroes out of average Joe or Jane. Some of these form the material of 'based on a true event' movies. TakeOff is one such movie.

Based on a real-life rescue mission of Malayali nurses trapped in the war zone of Iraq and taken captive by ISIS in 2014, TakeOff takes it material from their harrowing few days in captivity and a coordinated diplomatic rescue mission that procured their release. The engagement of the audience with the subject is brought by focusing on the life of one of the nurses, called Sameera, inspired from the character of one of the real-life nurses involved and played in the movie by Parvathi Thiruvoth.

The treatment, development and execution of Sameera's character - an independent working woman from a Muslim family, who becomes a divorcee and later marries her coworker, has been done commendably. Shot in actual locations, this is a laudable effort by the movie makers to convey authenticity of the situation, hopefully this will be a trend others will follow.

Also worth noting is the moderation exercised in tugging the heart strings of the audience through a melodramatic script which the original story had immense 'potential' for. The script, direction and acting have worked together to create as faithful an interpretation as possible, except for one part at the end (involving Kunchako's character.) But who does not like a happy ending and you have to considerate to a producer who put in the money and effort to let the crew shoot in real locations. So in the light of ensuring the producer's return on the investment, I, the clueless but haughty reviewer, approve this slight of script.

Parvathy Thiruvoth is a force to reckon in the Malayalam movie industry today.  Kunchako Boban and Fahad Fazil are grounded and mature in their supportive roles and so is Asif Ali, who also gets to put in a few minutes. Great job, director Mahesh Narayan and team Take-Off.

Read More

Dr Love

If you are in a mood for a semi-decent campus movie of recent origin in Malayalam, Dr-Love might be worth looking into. The movie has no super stars or so says Kunchako Boban, the only star in the movie. Considering his advanced age and receding hair line, the film makers gave him a very important role in college canteen, which is where you’ll find aging movie Malayalam movie stars who just can’t get enough of college life even if they have sired grandkids of college-going age. College Kumaran Lalettan is the prime representative of this species. Compared to that Kunchako could easily pass off as a PhD scholar at SB College, Changanassery.

 But Kunchako’s character – Vinayachandran is not into studying to gain a doctoral degree. Vinayachandran, a struggling writer manages to get a Dr prefix by offering consultations on love and romance, thus becoming everyone’s darling Dr.Love. 

The most convincing apsect of this movie is all college kids look like college kids. Sudheesh and Idavela Babu have been given a rest and their roles given to real youngsters like Bhagat, Hemant, Vidya Unni, Ananya, Manikuttan and others. Since just helping a few love lorn teens is not going to sustain the image of Dr.Love forever, the film makers introduce a cliched and predictable twist in the form of Bhavana in the second half. Thankfully the movie gets over before it twists itself into a knot.

Read More

Three Kings

If there is a category called self depracating comedy movies or what I’d call a contemporary version of slapstick humor, Three Kings will fall into that group.  When a movie knows it is not trying to sell a moral but only some cheap laughs and the audience knows that the movie knows, all that its creators have to do to make it successful is to bring on the laughter. 

Three Kings is a happy go lucky movie with characters to match. Indrajith, Kunchako Boban and Jayasurya are three kings without a kingdom, in search of a lost treasure. To help them in this quest we have three damsels – Samvruta Sunil, Ann Augustin and Sandhya. The movie tries to be funny and nothing else and succeeds for the most part, except when the humor becomes too slapsticky.

Just make sure not exercise your brain at any time while watching the movie.

Read More

Four Friends

Four Friends is Aashayein, Malayalam style. Both are based on the same theme - friendships at the end of life. It is even more unbearable than its Hindi cousin.Jayaram, Kunchako Boban, Jayasurya and Meera Jasmin play the title characters. The film exploits every cliche associated with a terrible disease which does the villain's role, thus saving production cost and saving us viewers from fake stunts and related audio visual effects. It reaches a point when we'd realize that a real human villain would have been more bearable. Lots of sacrifices and money flow through the story line, which finally comes to a screeching halt a top a bridge in Malaysia (brought to you by budget airlines and cheap international air fares.) This movie forgot to include this statutory warning, "Friends don't let friends watch Four Friends, if they really care about their friends."

Read More

Mummy and Me

Kunchako is almost ready to taken on Shivaji Ganesan. Used to be a time in Tamil cinema when a 60 year old Mr.Ganesan will wear shorts and show up nonchalantly at the neighborhood primary school reciting Thiruvalluvar verses and no one will even bat an eyelid. At that time a 60 year old playing his 6 year old self was perfectly normal, even if he had a mustache that might have taken 50 years to reach its full bloom.

Kunchako Boban is not Mr.Ganeshan's competition yet, but with every passing year he is getting closer to that goal. His time machine is stuck at Aniyathipravu and Guinness book of Records is about to award him the MBA student of the century, which is given to people who take 100 or more years to complete an MBA.

All said Kunchako is the most bearable of the characters in this film. Urvashi needs a shoot-at-sight restraint issued against her, she is just plain unmanageable. Archana Jose Kavi had chosen a movie that had the spotlight on her, can't blame her for the director or the audience who made this movie a roaring success at the box-office. Malayalam movie goers, you deserve this and nothing better, you are the culprits. Suffer biatches!

Read More