Uncle

Shutter from Joy Mathew was a subtle take on the fake morality of the society and the thriller aspect made it an exciting cinema. On a theme level, his new script Uncle is pretty much in the same zone again targeting the fake morality. But by taking certain u turns from his Shutter stands and also by worshipping political figures blatantly, Joy Mathew dilutes the impact.

Krishna Kumar is an exporting businessman who is still a bachelor. One day on his way back to Kozhikode from Ootty, he happens to see Shruti, his friend’s elder daughter stranded in Ootty as there was a strike happening there. Knowing the mischievous side of Krishna Kumar, Shruti’s daddy Vijayan got a bit tensed even though KK was his intimate friend. The drive from Ootty to Kozhikode and the issues through which it goes is what Uncle talking about.

So let me tell you one scene. Shruti rubbishes KK Uncle’s musical taste saying like her dad, he won’t like western music. And the typical heroic style surprise comes out when KK takes out a pen drive which played a new English song and Shruti was surprised, you know which song it was? Baby by Justin Bieber. And the humor sense of the character KK is supposed to be charismatic where as we as an audience would feel it as cringe worthy. I feel bad for Shobeendran sir. And towards the end in a scene similar to what Salim Kumar did in Queen, a character shouts that she will call “Vijayettan” (CM Pinarayi Vijayan). Well if CM sees the movie from a theater that might become his Kammaran moment.

Girish Damodar’s making has no grace and he makes zero effort to give a thriller feel to the script written by Joy Mathew. The dialogues are old school and Joy Mathew in a way is repeating the Shutter conflict in a different way. Ironically in Shutter he showed how the young generation was judged negatively and here he sort of changed his statement by making them look like irresponsible. And one problem with the script is that we know KK as a good guy and we can predict that the tension is unnecessary. Post interval the movie has no challenges and Joy Mathew goes ambitious by attacking stuff that should be attacked but in a more convincing way. Cinematography and edits are pretty dull. The one song by Shreya Goshal was beautiful, but it got wasted in the elaborate narrative.

Uncle also uses Mammootty as glamour prop. There is hardly anything for him to do with that much of talent. Karthika Muralidharan was okay as Shruti. Joy Mathew as Vijayan gets a space to perform. Muthumani gradually picked up the slang and becomes the applause grabber at the end.

Uncle is slightly better than the kind of films Mammootty has been doing for the past one year and that’s my justification for the rating (if you are here to debate about that). Joy Mathew recently said the audience should tell him which path to concentrate as he has done three roles in this movie (actor, writer and producer). Well sir, just watch Shutter after watching Uncle. You won’t need our help in figuring out an answer for that question.

Rating: 2.5/5