The thought behind the movie, Dheeran, directed by Devadath Shaji, the co-writer of Bheeshmaparvam, is to create that chaotic comedy towards the finale. And in order to achieve that, Devadath is building multiple tracks and small instances almost from the word go. While the dialogue-humor and certain character quirks make certain situations extremely hilarious, it feels like the movie had this ambition to be a madcap entertainer, but it somehow fell short of that aspiration. With humor saving the movie whenever the graph drops, Dheeran is enjoyable in parts.
The story is set against the backdrop of Malayattoor. Our main guy, Eldhose aka Dheeran, lives there, and his equation with most people in the village wasn’t that smooth. At one point, a group of people from Dheeran’s village had to go to this place named Denkanikottai in Tamil Nadu to get the body of a person who died in an accident. The things that happen in that journey and how it all is connected to Eldhose are what we see in Devadath Shaji’s directorial debut.
The premise is very much tailor-made for that confusion comedy, and the director had mentioned that the In Harihar Nagar kind of Siddique Lal comedy was the zone that he wanted to crack. The thing is, somewhere, the setups are kind of visible. In the very first scene of the movie, the character exposition is happening in an extremely verbal manner and to be honest that sort of over explaining through dialogues puts the movie in the backseat and the rest of the film becomes a challenge for the filmmaker to create a sense of curiosity in the minds of the audience. I feel this type of multi-character chaos comedy will work for the audience in the best way when it can balance chaos and curiosity. While the chaotic comedy part was working for Dheeran, the curiosity part wasn’t faring well.
Devadath Shaji has added a layer of social mockery to the story, and the script is trying to normalize the idea of intimacy without commitment in a rural setting. He uses humor as a good tool to present such ideas to a wider audience, whose approach towards that is still very judgmental. The emotional state of characters in the ambulance and their equation with Eldhose is done cleverly to create an ambience of friction, which makes it easy for the story to develop humor. Some of the instances in the climax fight are making us laugh out loud, largely due to the banter-humor. However, at times, the kind of high-energy Mujeeb Majeed creates through the background score is out of synch with the situations.
Rajesh Madhavan as Eldhose gets to be in his comfort zone of humor in certain parts of the movie. But in most areas, he is in that less animated, serious shade, and it wasn’t becoming funny. Jagadish, as the member, gets to do this mature leader character, and he shows that maturity without overdoing any of the emotional bits. Manoj K Jayan’s character is something that demands a certain level of subtlety along with his signature swagger, and he balances that neatly. Ashokan is playing this veteran bachelor, and it was almost like what if Thomaskutty was still a bachelor. In my opinion, Sudheesh got the most entertaining character in the film, and towards the last quarter, everyone was waiting for that character to open his mouth. Vineeth’s Kasaragod character was an interesting casting choice, but that character’s eccentricities at times felt a bit too much. Srikrishna Dayal as the antagonist was a fine and fresh choice. Shabareesh Varma and Abhiram Radhakrishnan were also pretty hilarious. Aswathy Manoharan, as Eldhose’s situationship partner, also did her part neatly.
Dheeran is not a sloppy attempt to squeeze in random dialogue humor in a generic plot. It has certain setups and payoffs and an intention to make the eventful travel of the characters entertaining for the audience. While certain character quirks, including old age romances and grudges within families, work in favor of the movie, the element of surprise is missing. Thus, in totality, Dheeran becomes an enjoyable film with occasional sparks of humor.
