Role Models

Fahadh Faasil choosing a Raffi film and director Raffi claiming that Role Models isn’t just a fun film gave me a little hope in the movie after having seen the disappointing Theppu Song. The trailer had this element of ZNMD type road movie and self discovery sort of thing and when I finally saw the film it was almost like watching Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara, but written and directed by Rohit Shetty.

Gautham is this working professional who is almost like a robot who doesn’t like to communicate with anyone. His father and mother are extremely sad because of this nature of Gautham. So they decided to ask his college day friends to help them in bringing back the old energetic Gautham. His friends decided to take him for a trip to Goa to sort out certain missing pieces and the movie is about this “operation”.

If instantaneous jokes that come through mumbling counter dialogues are enough for you for entertainment, Role Models will be okay for you. The movie is only interested in creating such humor. The film starts of as this journey to sort out mystery, then in the mid way it takes an Anniyan kind of transformation and towards the end it is almost a lecture on good parenting. The scattered nature of the screenplay will make you wonder what was the purpose of all those small bits and pieces in the earlier part of the movie. There is a scene where Sharafudheen’s character is helping a little girl in solving a maths problem and Ranji Panicker’s professor character looks at him proudly. Facepalm is probably the only reaction one could give to that scene and to be honest the level of preaching in Role Models is that cheesy. Whenever a character is introduced you will kind of understand what role they will have in the climax.

For an actor like Fahadh Faasil, this character is something that never tests his caliber. He is almost doing an exaggerated version of his role in North 24 Kaatham. Sharafudheen carries on with his typical style of delivering counter dialogues most of which are added during dubbing. Vinayakan and Vinay Forrt are just there in the crowd delivering occasional comedy lines. Namitha Pramod was fine. Raffi portrays the role of a psychiatrist in his usual style. Ranji Panicker, Siddique, Srinda and a few more are there in the film.

The making style is similar to Raffi’s previous directorial Ring Master. But Ring Master was a bit more engaging and wasn’t this plastic in nature. When it comes to Role Models the film looks scattered. From student suicide to abuse against women, Raffi tries to incorporate too much of things in a story that actually needed a simpler narrative. The desperation for being witty is also a problem. If you have this agenda of giving lectures to people, don’t do it through comedy that is almost slapstick in nature. When you see the film you will realize that “Thechille Penne” song and its lyrics don’t make any sense when you look at the story. That marriage scene involving Srinda wasn’t funny and the irony was that I could see women laughing for those scenes. Music wasn’t that great. Shamdat’s cinematography was fine.

I know most of you will scroll down to this portion to check the rating. So let me put it this way. There were people in the audience who were laughing loudly for some of the counter dialogues and there were also people who looked at them and wondered was it that funny? Now it is up to you.

Rating: 2/5