Aanakkallan

The new Biju Menon movie Aanakkallan directed by Suresh Divakar and written by Uday Krishna is an exhausting experience. With sickening writing and guessable jokes extending the runtime to almost an unbearable level, Aanakkallan is a victim of lackluster writing and senseless plotting.

Our hero Pavithran who is in jail for a theft case gets involved in a murder case with Kerala Police as he was a suspected witness to the crime. The two police officers who handle the case decide to give him an undercover image to investigate the case. How the journey to find the real culprit goes, along with a detailed account of what happened in Pavithran’s life is what Aanakkallan showing us.

Being sensible is not at all an agenda in the checklist of Uday Krishna and why that thought sticks out is because the movie isn’t trying to be a nonsensical entertainer. This idiotic investigation method one gets to see in Aanakkallan is something that happens when the DGP gets threatened by the CM. There is a comedy track featuring Siddique, there is Dharmajan doing the old school falling in the mud kind of physical comedy and also a family angle featuring Sai Kumar. The entire first half is filled with laughable yet so amateurish gags. And the movie throws an entirely different set of subplots and back stories to you in the second half making you question the relevance of the first half. The second half can boast about having the structure of a story, but there also the writing is outdated and Uday Krishna is stuck in his vintage days and that style is no longer appealing.

Biju Menon is simply repeating the successful tools in his arsenal and because this movie is such a dud in being original by any means, the typical feel of his performance doesn’t bore us at all and in fact, he is the only element that makes this movie a watchable/ bearable one. Siddique is wasted in a role where neither he nor the makers have clue on where to place that character. Dharmajan and Hareesh Kanaran were trying hard to make rotten jokes look fresh. God knows why Shamna Kasim’s character was placed in the movie. Suresh Krishna, Kailash, and Bala are there as part of the employment guarantee scheme I guess.  Anushree, Sai Kumar, Indrans, Bindu Panicker Sarayu, Sudheer Karaman etc are the other prominent faces in the cast.

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Good directors have the ability to chop off scenes that aren’t adding anything to the movie. If Suresh Divakar had the ability to sense that aspect of scenes, he might not have even committed to doing this project. Written by hitmaker Uday Krishna, this movie feels just like an attempt to capitalize on the salability of the acting charm of Biju Menon. There is hardly a scene that can give you a pinch of excitement and there is no shortage in the number of scenes that has zero relevance in the whole story. Suresh Divakar’s making is so dull that even a talented cinematographer like Alby fails to make a mark. The script is extremely outlandish and it is all over the place making it difficult for us to recollect how it all began. The music is forgettable and the background score is the usual.

I am someone who thoroughly enjoyed the last couple of films of Biju Menon even though both weren’t accepted wholeheartedly by the viewers. But with Aanakkallan, he gives us a movie that doesn’t deserve any sort of sympathy as it isn’t trying to give us a genuine entertainer.

Rating: 1.5/5