Padakkalam, the latest Friday Film House production directed by Manu Swaraj, is a fantasy comedy that gets the backing of clever writing. While the movie is effectively using the ability of its star cast to pull off humor on screen, what is refreshing here is how it uses the central idea to build an intricate setup that uses wit to keep things alive. With the banter comedy amusing the audience and the story offering almost all the actors great space to showcase their talent, this fantasy comedy has the texture of a typical one, but the concept really keeps you entertained.
So the story here is set against the backdrop of a college where this introverted student named Jithin is on the verge of a breakup with his girlfriend. In the meantime, he happens to witness certain things that made him believe that the professor named Ranjith in that college knows some black magic stuff, and he is controlling another professor named Shaji. Jithin and his gang’s investigation to find out the truth behind Ranjith and what happens during that is what we see in Padakkalam.
If you ask me a simple way to describe this film, I would say that thematically it feels like a blend of Adi Kappyare Koottamani and Mark Antony. The fun conversations between the friends, along with the confusion and situational humor the film offers, are really making it a laugh-out-loud drama for a major part. But the good thing about the writing is the fact that there is a solid concept here that makes it even more coherent. Just when you think the structure will be generic and the movie will rely on humor to get saved, Manu Swaraj introduces a third character and the twist in the fantasy, which excites us on a conceptual level.
Nothing phenomenal is happening on a visual storytelling level. The strong point of the movie is the story idea, and Manu Swaraj is packaging the film in a way that the audience understands the nature of the supernatural element in the story along with the main characters. Whenever we feel the movie will now just focus on being funny through these very physical comedies, we get to know the purpose of why certain characters are like that, which also acts like a twist in the tale. The major event in the story is something that can cause a lot of confusion for the audience, and knowing that, Manu acknowledges that in the story, and that also offers the movie a lot of scope to include humor.
Because of the concept this movie has, the three main actors of the movie get to perform two variations of the character in this film. Sharaf U Dheen, with that villainy in his eyes in the first half, shifts to the comical beats smoothly in the second half, and he was hilarious. Suraj Venjaramood has a prominent space in the second half of the movie, and he also gets to perform a drastic transformation in terms of the nature of the character and the body language. Sandeep Pradeep is the third important character in the film. Even though his character shift was not as dramatic as the other two, the way he carried the transformation was so good that I kind of understood why the makers of Kishkindakaandam felt confident about casting him as the lead in their next film. Content creators Saafboi and Arun Pradeep are pretty much doing what they do in social media, and they were absolutely hilarious, especially Arun Pradeep. Arun Ajikumar, the man behind the posters of movies like Bramayugam, is part of the cast, and he was also pretty good.
The good thing about Padakkalam is the fact that it does not use fantasy as an excuse to dump a pile of skit jokes on the audience. There is a fairly solid concept here, and the script is consistently ensuring that there is an even mix of fun elements and surprising twists in this tale. With actors pulling off the humor with absolute ease, Padakkalam is a thoroughly entertaining film that offers you a lot of laugh-out-loud moments.
