Parankimala

The existence of true love in a lust filled society was something that made the 1981 Bharathan film Parankimala a different romeo and Juliet. But when it comes to the remake they have tried to create some difference by changing the narration style to a flash back mode and it eventually ruined the romance in the movie. Over dosage drama, back ground music and slow motion shots are are clearly visible and the lack of good performances made a mess of the movie.

Well the story is the romance of Appu and Thanka. They are childhood friends and as they grew their friendship ended up in romance. There were quite a few restrictions in front of them. How these odds influence their life is what the movie discussing about.

As I said earlier, director Sennan Pallassery has tried to make a difference by making the scripting different by changing the narration and also by including some new elements in to the story ( like the police investigation). But what he missed out was the quintessential romance between the lead pair. More than love the movie focuses too much on lust. The miserable cast also insults the movie big time. Old fashioned ideas were used for visualizing and such drama executed with so much of imperfection can only make you yawn.

On screen Beyon and Vinutha Lal were pretty much similar (in terms of acting) to the actors who portrayed the respective roles in the original movie – unimpressive. There was a really good performance from Nedumudi Venu in the old version, but in the remake they just murdered that character by making it look like a buffoon. All those threatening sequences can only make you laugh because of Thirumurukan’s bizarre performance as Murukeshan. I mean who will make a Tamil guy speak Malayalam throughout film? Makes no sense! Kalaranjini’s character is just there to scream “Appu.. Appu..”. Kalabhavan Mani’s performance was a drop of water in the desert, but he was also used too much that his comedy pranks becomes annoying after a limit.

In the making, the director depends too much on background scores and slow motion visuals to show us the romance of Appu and Thanka and still he can’t succeed in establishing it. The jokes were unbaked and stood out of the storyline. Dialogues were okay but actors were not okay with it. Cinematography was good and edits were poor. BGM was excessive and the songs were average.

So, overall it is a totally underwhelming experience that emphasizes more on lust than love. My rating is 1.5/5 for Parankimala. Do watch the original one if you have any plans to see this one.

By Aswin Bharadwaj

Founder and editor of Lensmen Reviews.

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