In the second half of the movie Kallanum Bhagavathiyum, directed by East Coast Vijayan, the thief character Maathappan starts asking the goddess interesting questions about her attire and demands. It was in that spoofy zone, similar to something like PK. Seeing those dialogues after a pretty lackluster first half gave me slight hope. I thought the germ of the idea might have come from the events that would happen in the second half. But to my disappointment, the second half of Kallanum Bhagavathiyum is worse than the first, with redundant humor and cliched sentiments.
Maathappan is an unsuccessful thief who has a bad name but no success in theft. On his birthday, he planned one last robbery and decided to commit suicide if it failed. The robbery failed, but he met a girl named Priya that night who dared him to rob the idol of a Bhagavathy from a dismantled old temple. The do-or-die scenario pushes Maathappan to take up that challenge, and what we see in Kallanum Bhagavathiyum is the events that happen in Maathappan’s life after that incident.
The movie opens with an irrelevant choir song featuring Salim Kumar. Well, the fact that there were violinists in a scene with no sound of the violin itself gave me an idea about the level of care given to the movie on a making level. In the first half, the only agenda writer KV Anil and director East Coast Vijayan had in front of them was to somehow create a one-hour content with the backstories of the hero and heroine. After boring you with the usual stuff in the first half, they bombard you with useless side humor and too many sentiments and goodness in the second half. Those Johny Antony- Rajesh Madhavan sequences are super lousy, and they expose the cluelessness of the makers very quickly.
With his loud mind-voice, Vishnu Unnikrishnan delivers what East Coast Vijayan anticipated from a hero. He is trying a different slang, which was supposed to be Palakkad. But I must say that it hasn’t crossed the border of Thrissur. Anusree was pleasing in her character, and it wasn’t an extensive role. Mokksha, who plays the role of Bhagavathy in the film, looks beautiful for sure, and her dancing skills enable her to be East Coast Vijayan’s outdated visualization of a goddess. But the dubbing of the cheesy lines was awful. Maala Parvathy, Johnny Antony, Rajesh Madhavan, etc., are the other major names in the film.
Among the few promotional interviews of this movie, I have heard Mr. East Coast Vijayan saying that he had done a fair bit of research before commencing this project. Well, it is pretty clear that the latest film in that research was released at least 15 years back. Instead of developing the idea of a thief meeting a goddess, Vijayan, and KV Anil beef up the content with easily removable things. If it was the songs in the first half, the second half is stuffed with pointless comedy sequences that might earn them some YouTube revenue in the future. Even though I am not a massive fan of Ranjin Raj’s work, he is a composer with an identity. But the album of Kallanum Bhagavathiyum made me wonder whether the music and lyrics were both done by East Coast Vijayan.
By the time the movie ended, I could see many people around me enjoying a really deep sleep. It is summertime, and we are all tired and would like to nap in an AC hall. The only possible positive of this lousy fantasy is the sleep it offers the viewer by being tasteless from beginning to end.
The only possible positive of this lousy fantasy is the sleep it offers the viewer by being tasteless from beginning to end.
Green: Recommended Content
Orange: The In-Between Ones
Red: Not Recommended
