Aadhi

Aadhi is a hastily made star launch vehicle for Pranav Mohanlal that tries to squeeze in a lot of tried and tested formulas in to one story. Jeethu Joseph is trying to use all the story ingredients he is famous for. But the problem is the fact that we have seen similar ideas in the past and that makes it a dull experience. What I felt was really missing in this script was intelligence, something a director like Jeethu Joseph shouldn’t compromise on.

Adithya Mohan is an aspiring musician. He wants to enter the world of film music, but he hasn’t managed to get any offers till now. At one point he gets to know about a club in Bangalore where a lot of film professionals would come. So his friend told him that if he can make an impression by performing at that club, chances of getting an entry to the industry is high. So Aadhi goes there and unfortunately some incidents that happen during his performance puts him in an extremely difficult situation. How he ultimately escapes from that is what Aadhi talking about.

I felt that if this movie wasn’t made for Pranav Mohanlal, the story would have been a little more sensible. There is a gracious cameo in this film in the first half and we have Aadhi driving a Rolls Royce owned by Dr Roy of the confident group, from Kerala to Bangalore. This and a few more things were there in this film that made me wonder if they had to make these sort of glorification, why this kind of a story? It is a family drama of aspirations of kids and concerns of parents in the beginning. Then it suddenly becomes a thriller that wasn’t creating much of a curiosity as I have seen many films in mostly Tamil and Telugu of similar nature. The villain is extremely powerful and our hero is a common man.

Jeethu Joseph integrates everything he has done in his filmography in to this project. Parent – Child conflict over ambition, thriller elements etc are things we have seen in Jeethu’s films. The packed audience with whom I watched the film was given very few moments of excitement in this entire movie. The screenplay here has no moments of adrenalin rush or a phase of excitement to make us curious about how it is going to fall in place. In the beginning Jeethu gives us the information that our hero knows Parkour and Jeethu is trying desperately to add Parkour into the script. In an action set piece, four foreigners pop out as the villains’ henchman and I was wondering how he knew that Aadhi knows parkour. Satheesh Kurup’s frames feels quite restricted with really tight shots. Music wasn’t creating much of an impression. Jeethu has this fascination for using too much visual effects in his movies and the visual effects of Aadhi were as tacky as the one we saw in memories.

The challenge for Pranav Mohanlal in this movie is more physical than emotional. He is mostly in this “confused” mood and then out of the blue will come an action sequence that will show us his acrobatic skill. Siddique as usual manages to carry the melodrama convincingly. Lena makes the mother character a bit silly at times. Sharafudheen and Anushree have got characters with scope to perform. Jagapathy Babu doesn’t have much to do other than staring with smoldering intensity. Meghanathan, Siju Wilson, Sijoy Varghese, Adithi Ravi and Krishna Shankar are the other characters.

Aadhi is watchable if you have already started rooting for the lead actor without seeing the film. Apart from a few stunt sequences that have Pranav Mohanlal showing his flexibility, Aadhi is a dull movie from Jeethu Joseph.

Rating: 2/5