Pidikittapulli

Pidikittapulli, the new Sunny Wayne movie directed by Jishnu Sreekandan, comes when all of us complain about the lack of a good humor-oriented movie that can lighten and brighten the mood. But seeing this horrendously lousy film made from a script that doesn’t seem to have gone for a second draft, you might reconsider withdrawing your request for comedy films. The aim is to achieve the texture of a vintage Priyadarshan movie, but the end product is so bad that I think the guy who made an effort to leak this film would feel guilty for making people watch this film.

Rajashekhara Kurup is the prime focus of this movie. He is a very wealthy businessman who has a track record of cheating his business partners. The son of one such victim decides to abduct Kurup, but unfortunately, that plan goes wrong, and Shambu, an employee of Mr. Kurup, gets dragged into the picture. We see how Shambu tries to escape from this situation and how the kidnapper tries to fulfill his plans in this movie.

The plan is to mix coincidence and comedy of errors to create a hilarious story. But when it comes to the writing, it almost feels like they were desperate to make the scenes humorous. Unfunny mumbling counter dialogues and easily predictable slapsticky jokes are flowing without an end. The outdatedness of the scenes can’t be justified by saying the movie was made in 2019. 2019 was the year we saw Kumbalangi Nights, not Senior Mandrake.

I thought Sunny Wayne’s usual stiff acting could fit into a movie like this where performance is a bit eccentric for everyone. But sadly, it just made it even worse. Saiju Kurup performs a role similar to those characters played by Suraj Venjaramood in his early days; even though it’s not that great, considering the overall mediocrity, it even felt like a relief. Ahaana Krishna has nothing much to do here. Baiju was in his typical style, and it was sad to see someone like Lalu Alex in such a poorly written role. Marina Michael’s expressions are similar to our expressions while watching Pidikittapulli. Major Ravi’s performance and dialogue delivery reminded me of the classic Krishnanum Radhayum. I don’t know the name of the actor who played the role of the abductor, aka beta Arjun Reddy, and I don’t feel like making an effort to know his name.

Jishnu Sreekandan’s execution has no real visual sense to attract. A movie that comes under the production banner of someone like Mr. Gokulam Gopalan is expected to have a certain production value, and with largely flat lighting and depthless cinematography, you can’t even distinguish whether it is a daily soap or a movie. If you look at the script on a bullet point level, where the confusions are basically the bullet points, you would feel that there is potential in the idea. But they don’t have any plans to work on the basic idea, so it feels so lame. Jude Anthany Joseph is dancing and singing in this movie for a song. And that’s like the last thing you want to see in a film that has already eaten your brain.

The climax of this movie has a “twist,” and I was really hoping that they would tweak it as some kind of spoof. But no! Jishnu Sreekandan was serious about that twist, and the decision to freeze the frame on the “smart” hero was like the epitome of having a thick skin.