When you watch the first half of the new Saiju Kurup starrer, Written and Directed by God, it looks like this worn-out idea that any guy with this aspiration to make films would have in his teenage. The hero of this movie is supposed to be a filmmaker who has delivered a super hit and then delivered two consecutive flops. But the kind of irritation this character can give to the audience with the absolute lack of common sense, one would wonder how his first project ever got made. With such immature writing, clubbed with underwhelming, over-done performances, this cheap re-interpretation of Bruce Almighty might work for the ones who take daily soaps and their storylines seriously.
Jijo is our main man, who is an established director. Even though his first film was a hit, his next two films tanked at the box office, and he is now in a financial crunch. His ego is not letting him seek another job for financial stability, and what we see in the movie is a day in the life of Jijo when God decides to pay him a visit.
The movie has music by Shaan Rahman, and the makers have tried to make it a major thing by presenting that credit in the title font and all. But the entire first half of the movie is a background score mess. The introduction scene of the God character in this movie might make you think that the final mixing guy forgot to pause the playlist of background tracks Shaan Rahman gave him. Maybe the silence exposed the mediocrity of the movie, and the director asked Shaan Rahman to bombard the film with the background score. The stretched melodrama in the final leg of this movie might work for you if you haven’t even seen a short film in your life.
Saiju Kurup, who plays the character of Jijo, is repeating his usual set of expressions in playing these kinds of well-educated, foolish individuals. The fact that this movie, directed by Febi George, decides to make a director character this dumb sort of indirectly talks about the kind of movies that are getting green-lit. Sunny Wayne is doing this extended cameo kind of role with just two costumes, one a regular jubba and mundu and another dress that looks like a gown made out of the leftover clothes in a Karan Johar movie. Aparna Das, as the wife character, delivers her lines in a very odd way. Vaisakh Vijayan gets an extensive role in the film. However, the performance was forgettable, mostly due to the terrible writing.
At the end of the movie, God gives this idea to Jijo that Jijo’s life is a great comedy and it will work as a movie. I can confidently say that God has absolutely no idea about the new buying policy of OTT platforms. Three individuals are sharing the writing credits of this movie, and yet it looks like the first draft of the first script written by a school kid. The preaching in the narrative is so on your face that I feel priests might recommend this movie instead of a Sunday prayer. It seems like the team hired a highly paid drone operator for one day, and they made sure to utilize him to the fullest by making him shoot even the most normal scenes inside the house with a drone.
The content here is so outdated that every beat in the story is a cliche that anyone can easily predict, and the making of the movie makes it even worse by lingering on certain melodramatic scenes for far too long. I know that there are certain emotions that may work, even if it is cringe-worthy. But only good filmmaking can make even cliches look appealing. With the writing having no real intent to do something fresh, Written & Directed by God, is, in a way, unintentional blasphemy.
