The idea of the new Malayalam movie Padakkuthira is so outdated and slim that it almost felt like a script Udaykrishna – Sibi K Thomas would have rejected twenty years ago. This is a movie that is supposed to be an investigative journalism thriller. But the substance in this cliched story is so minimal that the makers are pampering the script with star-magic-level comedy. While some of those Akhil Kavalayoor jokes will make you giggle, the story part here is so shoddy that the mini-Udayananu Tharam that happens in the climax will make you facepalm.
Padakkuthira is a crime magazine that prints spiced-up stories about real people for its circulation. Nandakumar, who runs this magazine, accidentally met a man who claimed to be the editor of a major newspaper. Nandakumar and his team got the opportunity to save this man’s life from a group of goons. The information this man had with him about certain people in power and how that really changes everything for Padakkuthira is what we see in this Aju Varghese starrer.
SPOILER ALERT! In order to explain the sloppiness of the movie, I need to explain a crucial scene in the film. So our “crime (investigator) Nandakumar” gets a file with key evidence about a big name, and he goes to a channel debate directly with that file. He is not asking the person who gave him the file what kind of evidence it is, and he is not even opening that file to know what evidence is inside that file. And I remembered Aju Varghese had said in an interview that this movie wouldn’t insult the audience’s intelligence. I mean, the way they have tried to add humor into this two-hour-long movie is so lame that I can’t really blame them for not understanding the genre of the film they are making.
The only burden Aju Varghese may have with this movie is the fact that he is the hero of the movie. In terms of performance, it is not a demanding character with any sort of challenging scenes to perform. In fact, towards the end of the movie when he sort of gets these heroic bits where he even slaps the bad guy, it was somewhat unintentionally funny. Sija Rose plays a pretty useless character in the movie that was added just for the sake of that opening sequence. The entire opening sequence that shows us the backstory of the hero has absolutely no real purpose other than helping the movie reach the two-hour runtime mark. Akhil Kavalayoor, Shameer Khan, and Joemon Jyothir are improvising the humor to keep this boring story alive. Nandu, Renji Panicker, Indrans, etc., are also there in critical roles, along with the director himself in a key role. It’s a performance that will make you google search “Padakkuthira producer”, and in fact, Dr. Salon Symon is a co-producer of the movie.
The idea here is pretty usual, and like any other tacky film, instead of working on making the script coherent, the writers Deepu S Nair and Sandeep Sadanandan are trying to stretch the film with pointless distractions and comedy. The whole Chennai chapter has no purpose other than showing a poorly choreographed song. A good screenplay is something that will make you feel every scene is an integral one. Padakkuthira’s screenplay has too many scenes that have no impact on the main story. The cinematography is pretty basic, and there was a sequence featuring photographer Arun Punalur where the camera was totally out of focus.
Padakkuthira is a movie that you can’t even say had the potential to be a good film. It had a very outdated theme with predictable twists and too many irrelevant subplots. At no point does this movie feel exciting, and the contrived writing just goes after pointless distractions to extend the runtime and give the movie the skeleton of a feature film. In this hot summer season, if you are willing to pay 100 Rs per hour to sit in AC, this movie is a good choice.
Padakkuthira is a movie that you can't even say had the potential to be a good film. It had a very outdated theme with predictable twists and too many irrelevant subplots.
Green: Recommended Content
Orange: The In-Between Ones
Red: Not Recommended
