Aavesham Review | Fahadh Faasil Is Having a Ball in This Entertaining Yet Bloated Gangster Comedy

During the promotion of the film Aavesham, Jithu Madhavan, the director of the film, had said that they sort of discovered the character of Ranga during the process of making the film. I am saying this because, when you look at how the second half of Aavesham is shaped, one can sense a little bit of hesitance in the minds of the makers to take which path. While the first half sets up the premise for the whole movie in a very enticing way, the second half’s confusion on whether to focus on having a structured story or just explore Ranga makes Aavesham an entertaining yet vague film that lacks the tightness in writing.

The movie is basically about three boys who went to Bangalore for engineering. They got brutally beaten up by their seniors in the college, and in reply, they wanted to thrash them badly. The three-member gang plans to gain some ground support by having some connections with local goons, and that journey took them to this peculiar Bangaluru gangster named Ranga. The evolution of the friendship between these three and Ranga is what we witness in the movie Aavesham.

SPOILERS AHEAD! The first half is pretty straightforward, and in his typical style of presenting humor with quirkiness and subtlety, Jithu Madhavan establishes every character in a very peppy and fun way. I loved how he kept Ranga a goofy gangster with his peculiar fight strategies. The way Ranga gets involved in fights is so unique that one might even create their own stories. So the second half is basically a mind game between the director and the audience on who has predicted the real character of Ranga correctly. But the movie is a bit confused on where to focus, and the conflict of the boys wanting to stay away from Ranga is getting diluted due to the elaborate nature of the subplots.

I wouldn’t say both Romancham and Aavesham are totally in a different space. The treatment and the way the humor has been designed in this film have a similar texture. The only difference is that while Romancham was a lot more grounded, here, Jithu Madhavan is amplifying every element of fun. While in the first half, this style of amplification helps the movie as a festive release, the elevation of scale in the second half somewhat drags the film. The birthday celebration song, dumb charades, the real Ranga’s comeback, etc., have their fair share of laugh-out-loud moments within those sequences. But somewhere, when you look at the placement of those scenes in the totality of the movie, you can sense that the film is lingering on those fun elements for far too long. Sameer Thahir’s visuals accentuate the eccentric elements in the story to give it that funky outlook, and Sushin Shyam’s catchy scores are perfectly in sync with the movie’s mood. The fight choreography is also pretty slick.

This is a shade that we have not really seen Fahadh Faasil do in Malayalam, and thus Ranga and the quirks of that character are extremely entertaining on screen. Even in those second half bits where the screenplay is struggling to reach a sensible conclusion, the outbursts and emotional turbulence of Ranga will keep us occupied in the film, and I would say more than the writing, it was the performance that maintained the curiosity in the third act of the film. The three new faces, Hipzter, Mithun Jai Shankar, and Roshan Shanavas were really good in their respective roles, especially how they handled subtle humor through minor gestures. Sajin Gopu delivers a stand-out performance as the eccentric right hand of Ranga. In some of the stunt sequences, he garnered more claps than Fahadh Faasil. A special mention to Neeraja Rajendran, who played the part of the naive mother of one of the boys.

Aavesham is not at all a dull movie. From the very first scene to the end, Jithu Madhavan has kept the energy levels high for the film. But somewhere, the efforts to keep it entertaining and lively made them go after set pieces and sequences that never really pushed the movie forward to have a compelling climax or an exciting conflict. If seeing Fahadh Faasil having a ball on screen is enough for you to get entertained, then Aavesham won’t really disappoint you.