The initial moments of most movies, especially if the genre is a comedy, will give you an idea about whether the makers have clarity about how to pull it off. Pappachan Olivilanu from Sinto Sunny is that muddled comedy that pretty much exposes its unsure nature from the beginning. The KSRTC bus joke where a passenger hears Cess as Sex was pretty much the first red flag in the carnival that was about to follow.
As the title suggests, Pappachan is our central character, and he has this tall talking behavior mainly due to the larger-than-life persona his father had among the native people. At a point when people started to sense that hyperbolist in Pappachan, he decides to do something to prove he is a man of his word. How that episode changes everything for a lot of people is what we see in Pappachan Olivilanu.
In terms of the texture they want to recreate, Pappachan Olivilanu is very much in the same zone as Biju Menon’s Vellimoonga. But while that film wins you over with a smooth flow of one scene to another which pushes the story forward, here, Sinto Sunny is stuck in each scene, and he is trying to make it more lively by adding humor that feels lame. There is a scene in the movie where Pappachan is about to get arrested, and there is a possibility of him getting accused of adultery. The way they have made that character an absolute caricature just for the sake of comedy was just irritating. And the most annoying part is that that whole subplot of his previous love hardly has any relevance in the totality of the movie.
In the initial phases of the movie, when the tactics of the central character are silly, Saiju Kurup’s typical style works for the film. But around the midway point, both the script and Saiju decided to overdo that character, and frankly, it became increasingly annoying. When Pappachan mimics the Chithram dialogue in that court scene, I was reminded of the headache I had while watching the Thamarappoovil song in Aarattu. Srindaa in that Urvashi mode (she is getting stereotyped in such characters) was fine. Darshana Sudarshan was good in her role as the ex of Pappachan, and she gets to be the typical heroine with all the romantic bits and duet songs. Alexander Prashanth, as this comical villain, was fine. But sadly, the vagueness of the writing doesn’t really establish him as the villain. Vijayaraghavan, Aju Varghese, Kottayam Nazeer, Jagadish, and many others are there in supporting roles.
What is this movie about? What is the central conflict? There is no clear answer to these questions in the case of Pappachan Olivilanu. Instead of developing multiple points into a flowing script, Sinto Sunny is developing them without a solid link to the next event. There is a sequence in the movie where Prashant Alexander’s character decides to lock up Pappachan’s daughter with another boy, eventually resulting in a fight between them. Seeing the way that whole sequence culminates in the police station with a rabbit comedy, you can clearly sense how the entire script never went through scrutiny. The songs were pretty impressive, and it was actually nice to listen to an MG Sreekumar-Sujatha duet with the visual backdrop of those classic love songs.
Pappachan Olivilanu is an overdone comedy that occasionally tests your tolerance level by pushing the humor beyond a point. I was hoping that, at least by the end, it would have a narratable structure. But the desperation to make this a laugh riot ultimately makes it an unremarkable dud.
Pappachan Olivilanu is an overdone comedy that occasionally tests your tolerance level by pushing the humor beyond a point.
Green: Recommended Content
Orange: The In-Between Ones
Red: Not Recommended
