When the movie’s story is so lame, and the story credit belongs to the producer, you sort of know how much voice people involved in the making may have had in raising a red flag during the production of a film about its outdated and borderline spoof nature. The latest Shajoon Kariyal film, Mrudhu Bhave Dhruda Kruthye, belongs to that category. The movie’s writing is terrible, and it seems like the producer who wrote the story and the two other gentlemen who wrote the screenplay and dialogues have not visited a theater or seen any film released after 2000. With the actors making sure they won’t let the writers get the credit for mediocrity, this “Mumbaiwala Shankardas” story is the cinematic equivalent of a migraine.
So, the movie is juggling between multiple timelines with the same lead actor. The film opens with a Kabaddi match happening in the 80s and then we go to the present timeline where our hero Dasan, aka Shankardas, has returned to his roots after the state government invited him to do a project that converts seawater into drinkable water. But Dasan has some unfinished business here, and what we discover in the movie is the roots of all those issues.
After the first half, which by the way ends with a woman hanging, the movie restarts with a Mumbai episode, and I think the director saw the edit till that point and realized that nothing is working, so let’s just have an item number to wake up the audience. But the damage it created was so bad that even seeing Sunny Leone won’t give you any sort of happiness. Frankly, even Sunny is dancing like, what am I even doing here? At no point in the movie, we are shown Shankardas as a man who reads at least a newspaper. And when the film reaches the second half, this guy suddenly becomes the man behind a huge company that does hydropower projects. And there is this montage sequence of his growth that will make spoof movies feel more nuanced and real.
The performances are the worst part of this movie, and very much none of the main actors are able to make us say that he or she did it really well in one particular scene. I had a feeling that it would have been pretty easy for someone like Mammootty to play the role of Shankardas in Azhakiya Ravanan. Thanks to Sooraj Sun, I realized how difficult it was to strike a proper balance in doing such roles. Sravana, as the first girlfriend of Dasan, is trying to play it cute. But because she couldn’t deliver those lines properly (which were terrible by the way), the performance just became annoying. Shivaraj, who played Jagadeesh’s younger version in Ozler, is there in the film in a negative role, but the performance was just forgettable. Even the slightly experienced actors like Anil Anto have delivered their career-worst performance for this movie.
There is a scene in the movie where our hero meets the love of his life in Mumbai. She is walking on one side of the road, and she runs across the road and opens her umbrella to protect a lady sitting on the sidewalk from splashes of water. Our hero sees this and love gets bloomed. This is the creative growth level of the people involved in the making of this film, and I am talking about this as a sample as the rest of it is competing with this in being wincing. There is one more sequence in the movie where our hero goes to meet the terrorizing don of Mumbai and becomes a friend of him, just like that. I mean, Kuch bhi? Just like the dialogue writer and screenplay writer, the music director of the movie also makes sure that the production quality of the movie will be in sync with the quality of the performances we see.
To all those YouTubers who are running out of content for roasting, please add Mrudhu Bhave Dhruda Kruthye to your list and wait for its OTT release. For a relaxed watch with your friends on a Sunday afternoon, this movie is a hilarious choice. Mrudhu Bhave Dhruda Kruthye can be used as study material for many aspiring film people, especially actors, on how not to act. Apparently, the production house of the movie is Hydroair Tectonics, the same company our hero owns in the movie. Well, this is easily the worst publicity campaign I have seen from a company.
Mrudhu Bhave Dhruda Kruthye can be used as study material for many aspiring film people, especially actors, on how not to act. Movies like these are the occupational hazards of reviewers.
Green: Recommended Content
Orange: The In-Between Ones
Red: Not Recommended
