There is a soulful melancholy to the signature background scores created by Govind Vasantha that usually elevate the emotional graph of a scene or a movie to a very moving and aching space. In the case of the new film Little Miss Rawther, Govind’s music acts like CPR, but unfortunately, Govind’s typical score that tries to enhance the emotional bits and editor Sangeeth’s efforts to make it quirky can’t really save this muddled romantic drama that is clueless about the shape it wants to take. With discrete moments of dialogue humor dragging the movie slightly away from a draining experience, Little Miss Rawther is a movie that tries too hard with very little substance.
The movie is about the love story of Abhijith Chadradas. He wants to be a filmmaker, but his movie plans are yet to work out, and he is stuck in life. He had a relationship in college with a girl named Naina Rawther, which unfortunately ended, mainly due to the unstable future. In the movie, we see the series of events that happen when a confused Naina calls Abhijith on the night before her wedding.
Director Vishnu Dev wants the movie to have this quirky style, and you can see this Alphonse Puthren style editing table experiments in the film’s narration. In the first half, where the writer has the duty of establishing the relationship dynamic between the hero and heroine, they are trying to develop it through cuts that take you to random events in the past. Almost 20 minutes into the movie, our hero is in a stoned state, and for more than an hour after that, the film keeps him in that space, making the movie look like a stoner comedy.
They had invested so much time in making the stoner comedy work that when they try to empathize with the hero as some kind of victim of poor childhood, you just don’t feel for the character. In the climax, when we see him eating mutton biriyani with those sad eyes, writer Shersha Sherief, who has acted the part of the hero, is expecting the audience to root for him. But the movie was too much of a narcotic ride till that point, and you can only look at him as an annoying manchild. There is no emphasis on a writing or making level to understand his volatile behavior. As I already said, the music by Govind Vasantha is trying too hard to add soul to a shallow drama.
Gouri G Kishan, as the title character Little Miss Rawther, aka Naina Rawther, has that flow in being that personality. And she shares a nice on-screen chemistry with Shersha Sherief. As the hero Abhijith, Shersha Sherief is playing the character mostly in that intoxicated space. The character is either drunk or under the influence of weed. Since such moments’ primary focus is humor, the irreverent tone in the dialogues works. But in the scenes that focus on his less-spoken emotional side, the acting isn’t great enough to make us feel for that character. Editor Sangeeth Prathap is there as an actor in the last quarter of the movie as a comic relief. Jishnu Sreekumar as the feeding dad Kalayikka was memorable.
The lead actor of the movie and the main character of this movie are scriptwriters, and the climax hints at the possibility of Little Miss Rawther being a story inspired by real life. Making movies based on your own experiences is not something new, and movies should be personal to an extent. The problem with Little Miss Rawther is that it is so occupied with the desperation to be a joyous entertainer that it pretty much forgets the need to create depth to the relationship and have an up-close look at the characters.
It is so occupied with the desperation to be a joyous entertainer that it pretty much forgets the need to create depth to the relationship and have an up-close look at the characters.
Green: Recommended Content
Orange: The In-Between Ones
Red: Not Recommended
