Sitting through Kuttimama I was wondering how someone like VM Vinu became so unaware of the fact that Malayalam cinema has moved a long way from the days he made a Balettan or Vesham. Kuttimama is a pointless skit comedy that will make you wonder what in that story prompted Gokulam Gopalan to invest money in it. Kuttimama is a weird movie that initially wants us to look at it as a fun film about an ex-military officer’s pretentious old stories and after a point, the movie goes all patriotic and asks us to believe that all those stories you laughed, in the beginning, were true.
Shekharan Kutty is an ex-military officer. Everyone at his place is not really fond of him as they found his military stories as an exaggerated annoyance. What exactly is the conflict in this movie is still a mystery to me. Anyway the movie Kuttimama ultimately shows us how wrong the people in his place were about his achievements; basically a Kanaran story on the silver screen.
You like watching the program “comedy stars” where most of the jokes are slapstick and predictable? Then this movie might well work for you. It has an outdated set of caricature jokes giving it the oxygen required to run through the certified run time. The main problem I felt here is that there are no major conflicts in the movie. Perhaps VM Vinu sensed that problem and writer Manaf decided to include Mr. Vinu’s classic ingredient; everyone misunderstanding the hero. But the script is so wayward that instead of focusing on that, it focuses on a Jayan photo. As I said, the movie tries to say that what we thought as the exaggerated stories of this old man was actually true, and to make it believable, Sreenivasan is actually doing a fight scene in the climax where he fights less and the editor fights more.
Sreenivasan has become stiffer and it is actually his typical style that helps him in being that carefree Kuttimama. Dhyan Sreenivasan plays the younger version of the title protagonist and to be honest he is always spotted with a laughable smoldering intensity on his face. Durga Krishna and Meera Vasudev respectively play the younger and older version of the wife character named Anjali and both of them are just okay in those terribly written scenes. Vishak Nair and Nirmal Palazhy are the comic reliefs in this movie and Manju Sunichen who got a less gimmicky character was my favorite in the whole film.
VM Vinu has not updated his software. It is not like the tacky script written by Manaf made it a horribly directed film. The movie just doesn’t have that flow in its making to keep you interested. The second half of the movie is a mess. We are shown a sequence where Dhyan Sreenivasan does a Thira again without the help of Shobana. Dhyan saves the life of Durga Krishna when she loses control of the Enfield and was about to fall from a cliff. And you know how he did that? By following her on a bicycle and simply holding the bike from the front. And in that absolutely clueless phase, we get to see a scene featuring the classic memory lose, young Kuttimama killing Pakistan army men, old Kuttimama thrashing Tamilian goons, etc. Varun Vinu’s frames are pretty average. The music from Achu Rajamani isn’t that bad actually. But the awkward placing and the portrayal of those songs are a mighty bore.
In Kuttimama, in the middle of an ex-military meeting, the scene abruptly shifts to hyper-patriotism and greatness of soldiers for a minute, with music that is supposed to give you Goosebumps and then suddenly it shifts to the mediocre comedy tone. That scene actually shows us the cluelessness of this movie in terms of where it wants to place itself.
Rating: 1.5/5
Kuttimama is a pointless skit comedy that will make you wonder what in that story prompted Gokulam Gopalan to invest money in it.
Green: Recommended Content
Orange: The In-Between Ones
Red: Not Recommended
