Pathrosinte Padappukal

Pathrosinte Padappukal starts off giving us a feeling that it has the potential to be the next Thanneer Mathan Dhinangal. Even when the awkwardly landed ending of the first half happened, I was hoping the film would find something to work on in the second half. But when the movie enters its second half, the writing is all over the place, and it becomes an excruciatingly long film that isn’t going anywhere.

As the title suggests, the film is about the kids of Pathrose or rather one particular kid of Pathrose, Tony. His elder brother Sony is a crazy guy who follows this hippy style. His younger brother has police cases against him. Tony also had no job, and he was never really serious about having a job. The movie focuses on the events that happen when a job becomes a necessity for Tony to marry the girl he loved.

Be it Thanneer Mathan Dinangal or the latest Super Sharanya, there is an impression that these movies don’t have a specific story but portray the day to day life in a humorous way. Dinoy Poulose, who co-wrote TMD, is the writer and hero of Pathosinte Padappukal. Dinoy is trying to recreate the exact texture of Thanneer Mathan in this movie, and in the beginning portions, the humor works for the film. But things go horribly wrong for the movie in the second half. It almost felt like they decided to write random stuff with jokes at locations they had permission to shoot. It was that random.

When you see sequences with humor at the beginning of a movie, one can assume that it is an attempt to familiarize us with characters’ dynamics. But in the case of Pathrosinte Padappukal, this kind of establishing comedy just doesn’t end. I still can’t figure out the necessity of that whole Moonnar sequence. Yes, Sharaf U Dheen had a ball in that entire episode. But did that help the story in any way? Afsal Abdul Latheef is not bothered about having a structure to his movie. They are just creating too many characters and reckless situations, assuming people will only think about the counter dialogues happening in each scene.

As Tony, Dinoy was okay, and it is a character that has no major changes in the graph. Sharaf U Dheen as Sony was hilarious, and he is pretty much the saving grace of this messed up story. Naslen gets to play a rude character this time. James Eliya as Pathrose was fine, and Johny Antony in his typical style was also okay for that character. Ranjita Menon as Ammu deserves to be mentioned. She has got the looks of a girl next door, and she uses the opportunity to display her acting skills. Alice Paul as the grandmother was also memorable.

In the recent past, I have seen a few films that somewhere followed the treatment Girish AD started off with TMD. And there are a lot of people who think that its a very easy way to create an entertainer without the need for a great story at its core. Pathrosinte Padappukal, in a way, shows the viewer how difficult it is to pull off humor-driven subjects with a slim plot. After a great start, Pathrosinte Padappukal plunged into mediocrity, and it never recovered.