At its core, Paranthu Po from director Ram is your clichéd idea of a parent or parents getting that awakening after having an eventful journey with their kid. We have seen a zillion stories of people changing over a travel experience, and that is precisely the challenge in front of Ram, as the story structure will not excite the audience. So, in order to make sure the audience won’t find it preachy, Ram uses humor, and the banter between the adult and the child is very mature. With the primary layer being humor, this life lesson movie works because it sort of dares to be bizarre in a fun way.
Anbu is a young boy who lives with his father, Gokul, and mother, Glory. Gokul and Glory are these middle-class parents who want to give the best to their kid. But since they don’t have the support of their families, they are struggling in life. Anbu, who wishes to have a free life, is not happy with the way his parents lock him up at home when they leave for work and sign him up for expensive online classes. What we see in Paranthu Po is one accidental road trip that happens, where Anbu and Gokul go to these rural places and meet a lot of new people.
In many ways, this is a preachy movie that has a very quirky approach towards what it wants to convey. Ram’s movies have always had a raw approach towards understanding human beings. Even when some characters in his stories do the most selfish things possible, rather than judging them, he prefers to go into the whys of such an act. In a way, Paranthu Po also has that raw questioning quality of several other Ram films. But this time, the foundation he has built for the story is made of sarcastic comedy.
Gokul and Glory are the representatives of the modern-day parents who want to give the best to their kid, and at the same time restrict the kid from exploring things on his own. In a way, the structuring of the screenplay is done in order to make both Gokul and Glory loosen up. The idea of a better life, which has these materialistic attachments, is what creating a distance between the parents and the kid. The movie shows us that when Anbu is set free, he is learning more life lessons and he is learning about sharing and valuing things. And on multiple occasions, we are shown that Gokul is more concerned about the money attached to everything.
When I say all these things, you might feel that it is this extremely juvenile movie that sort of asks kids not to do this and that. However, director Ram rarely makes it this parenting lecture for the audience to endure. But instead, he makes it a chaotic comedy where a father and mother are running after their only kid to get control of him, but eventually have to surrender to the boy’s demands. The last 20-30 minutes of the movie are a laugh riot where the characters are in a panic mode. Even the situation comedy we laugh at in those moments actually has a different layer, which says a lot about the anxious nature of Gokul and Glory. Ram wants the tone of the movie to be childish, argumentative, and bizarrely funny. And the music with English and Tamil lyrics really helps the movie in achieving that.
The character design of Gokul is pretty much like what if Shiva from Tamil Padam became a new generation parent. The way he says those lines, the way he tackles the smart comebacks of his kid, or even the way he appreciates the talent, even in the cheeky and naughty things his son does, has that signature Shiva element, and it perfectly matches the sarcastic tone of the film. Grace Antony as Glory was the real surprise package. In the initial sentimental bits, we see a different kind of Glory, who is sacrificing everything for a better future. But as soon as she joins the family on the trip, the character sort of switches, and this beta Urvashi kind of performance was just hilarious. Ram’s frequent collaborator Anjali plays this cameo-like character of Gokul’s school-time crush, and how that part of the film addresses and later uses the innocent romance was fun to watch.
Aju Varghese’s character has very minimal screen time, but there is a beautiful bit of trust associated with that character, and the performance had that required grace. Vijay Yesudas, Jess, Dia, etc., are the other names in the cast. The real star of the show was master Mithul Ryan, who performed the part of Anbu. Anbu is not your typical kid character who needs to be informed every single time about everything. In fact, the backbone of this whole idea is Anbu’s adamance and the way he questions and demands many things. And Mithul was able to portray that on screen.
There are patches in this movie where you might wonder what they are trying to convey through this film. And that’s mostly because Ram doesn’t want the movie to feel like your “moral of the story” kind of film. Through a series of mostly hilarious instances in an unplanned trip of a father and son, Paranthu Po is asking people to feel life and plan accordingly, rather than planning first and forcefully fitting into it.
