Pavi Caretaker Review | What if Lunchbox Got the Treatment of 2 Countries

The intimately vulnerable side of male loneliness is a topic that is rarely addressed in our movies. Around the one-hour mark in the film Pavi Caretaker, when the movie slides into this “Lunchbox” -ish love story of this middle-aged single man, I sort of hoped something better would happen in the latter part of the movie as the filmography of actor-director Vineeth Kumar has always shown some genuine effort. Sadly, this core theme gets brutally abused by caricaturish eccentric style humor, and what you get is an outdated and clueless film that just struggles to find genuine humor.

Pavithran is our title protagonist, and he is an ex-NRI who is now doing the job of a caretaker in a flat. To earn more money, he takes the night shift security job at the same flat. He lived in a separate rented house because his pet dog Bro, was not allowed in that flat. SPOILERS AHEAD! Things took an interesting turn when the house owner of his rented space decided to give the space to a girl during nighttime as Pavi wouldn’t be there. This leads to an interesting letter-communication between the two tenants, and what we see is the evolution of this love story. 

Pavi Caretaker is simply a treatment mistake. It has all the baggage of being a Dileep starrer. If you did facepalm listening to the “I am the caretaker. I don’t care” joke in the trailer, then this is precisely the movie from which you should stay away. This type of exaggerated humor is there throughout the film, and Vineeth Kumar’s failure as a filmmaker is in his inability to understand that such a treatment doesn’t work for a story like this. In the very beginning of the movie, when Dileep makes this funny face in order to unlock the phone, I saw the first red flag, and then the movie went on to become a carnival, and one could only feel pity for those scattered green flags moments that never deserved to be in this film.

It is true that Dileep has a signature style, and there are a lot of fans for that style of comedy. But just like how we don’t really go to foreign countries to shoot a romantic song now, even the acting style needs to have a timely reinvention. From murmuring mind-voice to doing all that overtly comical stuff on screen, you just feel bad for his lack of understanding of the evolution of comedy that has happened in the industry. Radhika Sarathkumar, Johny Antony, Dharmajan Bolgatty, etc., are the other main characters in the movie, along with a pool of heroines to create misdirection, and that includes Swathi Konde, Dilina, Jodhi Jayakumar, and Shreya Rukmini. Special mention to Anne Amie for her nicely modulated voice for the letters, which made a lot of people predict last-minute cameos based on the actors to whom she had lent her voice.

The script written by Rajesh Raghavan is finding it difficult to build the story around the central idea of two people loving one another through letters. It is like they just don’t have anything substantially good with them to make the romantic track solid. At regular intervals of time, the movie annoys its viewers by going towards over-the-top humor, and rather than making the audience laugh, the makers were just exposing their inability to write something that is genuinely moving. There is a moment in the film where Pavi goes to the top of the flat and talks about his loneliness to his fellow security guy. Because of the unnecessary Parakkum Thalika, Tom and Jerry jokes in the movie, such a scene falls flat, and you just won’t feel any sort of empathy towards Pavi. There is a totally unnecessary action sequence in the movie, and I was like nobody at the editing table told the director how ridiculous it is to see Unnikrishnan from Ee Parakkum Thalika become Valayar Paramashivam in the same movie. The slow romantic songs in the film are wonderful to listen to. Sanu Thahir’s cinematography maintains mostly a brightly lit outlook to keep the film in a humorous feel-good space.

When I saw Dear Friend, Vineeth Kumar’s previous film, I was disappointed because a major chunk of the film worked for me immensely, and the lack of an impactful climax bothered me. When it comes to Pavi Caretaker, the emotion is anger rather than disappointment as the core theme was such a solid one. By hammering it with hammy humor, Vineeth Kumar makes a forgettable film with zero takeaways.