If you are someone who has felt that the last movie of director Sreejith Vijayan, Kuttanadan Marppappa and the last hero outing of Bibin George, Oru Pazhaya Bomb Kadha are enjoyable films, then the new movie Margamkali that marks the first collaboration of these two might work for you as a passable entertainer. I personally am not a fan of the movies mentioned in the beginning and apart from a couple of humorous scenes Margamkali for me was a charmless effort at creating a love story. When Siddique cracked a Kaviyoor Ponnamma related joke towards the end, I really laughed thinking how good it would have been if the whole movie had that kind of sense of humor.
Sachi is a young man who has this gifted talent for writing love letters that can make people fall in love. And Sachi is a mini love guru to his close aides. One of Sachi’s plans to help a friend who got dumped by his crush ended up in his meeting with another girl named Urmila. The movie Margamkali shows us the ups and downs in the relationship between these two.
There is an extremely hilarious sequence in the second half featuring Dharmajan and Aadu 2 villain Hariprashanth MG. The whole audience cracked up for that sequence and that’s perhaps the only true moment in this whole movie that has an excruciating length. The particular scene I mentioned has absolutely zero relevance in the context of the story and the sad part of this movie is that there are so many such unnecessary comedy bits that fall flat in this wannabe entertainer. The characterizations and the logical reasoning behind them are totally absurd. The whole back-story to the conflict between the hero’s parents was super lame. Sasankan Mayyanad who wrote the script of the movie has said in an interview that he got the idea of the movie when he thought about someone like Urmila. I appreciate the sincerity in his intention. But squeezing in skit comedy and elongating the length of the movie pointlessly is not the way to achieve that.
Bibin George gets a character that seems to be in his comfort zone. He has that earnestness in his portrayal to make that character look cinematic. Namitha Pramod has got a role that’s performance-oriented and she got the pitch of the performance and fitted into the tone of the film. Baiju Santhosh gets a character role here and was good at it. Hareesh Perumanna and Dharmajan are really unnecessary but really funny. I hated the character construction of both Shanthi Krishna and Siddique, but Siddique was able to make it look humorous. Sowmya Menon has a pointless small role.
The writing of this movie and the presentation of it was extremely problematic. Sreejith Vijayan’s first movie Kuttanadan Marppappa had a misogynistic tone and here also he continues to spread that agenda. In one scene through the character played by Hareesh, the film glorifies stalking as persistence and the idea to marry the girl without caring about her opinion as smartness. The jokes are mostly sexist and racist. The movie wants to show itself as a story that looks at the inner beauty of people but throughout it is depending on body shaming jokes for humor. The cinematography was fine. That love song was really catchy.
Bibin George is given writing credits for dialogues and Vishnu Unnikrishnan is credited as an executive producer (a creative role in Hollywood). While you watch this film you may get a feeling of watching a repaired skit script written by Sasankan and tweaked by Bibin and Vishnu. But the flaws in the basics can’t be fixed using mere dialogue humor.
You may get a feeling of watching a repaired skit script written by Sasankan and tweaked by Bibin and Vishnu. But the flaws in the basics can’t be fixed using mere dialogue humor.
Green: Recommended Content
Orange: The In-Between Ones
Red: Not Recommended
