Kadha Innuvare Review | A Shallow, Lifeless Xerox of C/O Kancharapalem

The makers of the movie Kadha Innuvare haven’t really revealed anywhere that this movie is a remake of the 2018 Telugu film C/o Kancharapalem. So, if you have seen that film, there is absolutely no need to watch this soulless remake. Ironically, at a time when even Malayalam films are having a day 1 Telugu version release, Vishnu Mohan has decided to remake a film with a fan following without even mentioning the original in interviews or even on the credits. When you look at the trailer of the film Kadha Innuvare, it has a feeling that it is exploring the life of a character who is in his late 40s. And if you look at the dialogues of the character Ramachandran, played by Biju Menon, it almost feels like the older version of Victor, the character he played in Pranayavarnangal. These were the factors that got me excited about this movie. But by making it a collection of shallow stories intercut in an underwhelming way, Kadha Innuvare falls flat.

It is kind of difficult to explain the plot of the film as it is spread over many years. We have the love story of younger Ramachandran with his school-time crush Janaki. Then, we have another love story set against the backdrop of Alappuzha, where a communist man named Joseph falls in love with a girl named Uma. Then, there is the main love story that features our hero, a peon named Ramachandran, and his senior officer, a single mother named Lakshmi. And there is another love story between a sex worker and a man who works in a liquor shop. The events that unfold in each love story that had their own share of challenges is what we see in Kadha Innuvare.

C/o Kancharapalem was one indie attempt that felt fresh because of how the scenes had a very organic texture. You sort of adored that movie’s technical limitations, as the casting and performances made the characters all the more real. The evident lack of depth in each story is the main issue with the screenplay of Kadha Innuvare. One of the most annoying things about the film was the stiff dialogue delivery from the actors. Even the ones who are known for having a refined dialogue delivery are sticking to what is written, and it was almost like director Vishnu Mohan wanted them to say the lines exactly the way it has been written. Even though the movie is pretty much a scene-by-scene copy of the original, the way it shuttles between each of these stories without giving the audience enough to invest in any of the stories takes away the so-called feel-good factor from the film. Towards the end, when the movie decides to show us the dramatic and heartbreaking bits in each story, you just won’t feel anything for the characters in that story, and that is because of this parallel narration that has a very short span.

The insecure, lonely character of Ramachandran is a character that is in the zone of Biju Menon, and the Malayalam version of this character is very much in that Victor kind of space. Methil Devika makes her debut with this film, but her performance is flawed. She being camera conscious is very evident in every frame, and her dialogue delivery, even in that crucial interval block, feels pretty lifeless. Anu Mohan, as the short-tempered Joseph, was fine. One of the main victims of the stiff dialogues was Nikhila Vimal, who is usually pretty fluent. The chemistry between Hakkim Shahjahan and Anusree on screen is pretty good. But again, the shallowness of the romance because of the dialogue makes it feel like a desperate attempt to add a progressive layer.

Vishnu Mohan, who previously made Meppadiyan, has failed to understand why C/o Kancharapalem worked for audiences across the languages. There is a sense of sincerity in how each character behaves, which looks so authentic in the original. The staging of the scenes in Kadha Innuvare is highly dramatic. The behavior of the characters in the movie feels almost like an unintentional tribute to the treatment of movies that were released in that era. Kadha Innuvare is a great example of how a movie can fail if the director can’t understand the soul of the source material. C/o Kancharapalem was a very indie film with relatively new actors. Despite having a stellar cast, the support of the cinematography by Jomon T John, and the editing of Shameer Muhammed, Kadha Innuvare feels empty.

The only major creative tweak Vishnu Mohan has made to the original is the inclusion of the character played by Hakkim Shajahan in the climax of the movie for 5 seconds. Frankly, that creativity can confuse the audience as it messes up the final big reveal by Ramachandran. If it was any good, I would have at least recommended Kadha Innuvare to the people who hadn’t watched C/o Kancharapalem. But the filmmaking here is so sloppy that recommending Venkatesh Maha’s original, which is available on Amazon Prime Video, would be the right thing to do.