James and Alice

When the second half of James and Alice started, I had this impression that the movie will take a lighter approach in presenting its idea. But after that very narrow phase of “Bruce almighty”ness the film went back to its teary dramatic phase and thus fails to create an emotional impact on the viewers.

James is an ad film director and Alice is a bank employee and they have a daughter. Even though it was a love marriage, the current equation between them isn’t well balanced. The movie basically focuses on that one incident which gives James a chance to rethink and repair this scenario. The events that happen at the end of it all is what James and Alice talking about.

As I said, the large chunk of melodrama is the villain. The preaching they insert in every frame looks unattractive. The realness we sort of expect in a story that deals with a middle class / upper middle class life was missing in the film. The film starts to have completely new attire in the second half, but the writing couldn’t keep that slightly sarcastic momentum created at that point. The last quarter of the film is seriously stretched out.

As a cinematographer turned director, Sujith Vaassudev keeps the visuals in the pleasing level. The lively frames never give any awkwardness to the movie. But the making is slightly outdated. Now we are at a phase were most movie makers are giving emphasis in getting more real output from the performers and here we don’t get to see that realness in writing and presentation. The melodrama in the last half an hour or so somewhere reminded me of movies directed by Mohit Suri.  The writing of the revisited scenes and the portions around it had the grace we wish to see. Edits in the first half had slight hiccups. I must say that the execution of the accident scene was fabulous. The music from Gopi Sundar was catchy.

On screen Prithviraj was okay playing the role of James in his usual style. Vedhika finally gets an emotionally heavy character in Malayalam and the actress was good. Sai Kumar with his experience performed the character effortlessly. Kishor Sathya got a nice character role. Parvathy Nair was good as Nandhu.  Sudheer Karamana, Manju Pillai and Sunil Sughada also performed nicely. The little girl delivered a good performance. Sijoy Varghese with the voice of Anoop Menon looked really perfect for that role.

To conclude I would say, James and Alice need a little more softness and lightness. The conflicts are a bit too theatrical and the making overall isn’t completely engaging. Acknowledging a few technical and performance oriented pluses I will go with a generous 2.5/5 for James and Alice. One time watch for those who love the Aashiqui type melodramatic love stories.