Porattu Nadakam Review | Yet Another Underwhelming Iteration of Sandesham

Political satire is a genre that Malayalies love. The never-ending popularity of Sandesham, even after being criticized as an apolitical film, is proof of that. In the last few years, we have witnessed a lot of satirical films, and since religious hatred in the country has increased exponentially, there is a need and space for effective political satire. Porattu Nadakam, written by Suneesh Varanad, is also trying to tap into that space by mocking every political party. But the issue is that it is basically a collage of all the political reels, trolls, and newspaper headings disguised as a satirical drama. Rather than just the occasional giggles it manages to create due to the familiarity of certain digs, Porattu Nadakam pretty much has nothing in it to be memorable.

The story is happening in a village named Gopalapura, which is situated on the Kerala-Karnataka border. Our hero, Abu, is a communist party worker, and he is in a financially difficult situation. The bank has given him an ultimatum on the repayment of his loan. The various options in front of Abu to avoid bank procedures and what he has to go through for that is what we see in Porattu Nadakam.

Getting a gold chain from cow dung is one key situation in the movie, and Suneesh Varanad has tried to design everything around this event. But in order to reach there, he struggles to create an engaging screenplay. As I already mentioned, he is simply bloating the script by squeezing in all the jokes we say against various political parties. It is not done in a seamless manner and many of these sequences that are added for the sake of saying politics is not really affecting the central idea. If you look at the way the movie ends, it’s almost like they ran out of jokes against parties and concluded the whole exercise abruptly.

Saiju Kurup goes back to the Praarabdham Star zone, and it is his usual performance, which works fine for the film. Dharmajan Bolgatty plays the role of Abu’s close aide, Murugan. Nna Thaan Case Kodu fame Advocate Shukoor plays the role of this right-wing leader Gopal Ji, and it was an okay performance. Rahul Madhav, as Kiran, plays this caricature role of an NRI. Sunil Sukhada, Babu Annur, Chitra Shenoy, etc., are some of the other prominent names in the cast, along with several other actors in forgettable roles.

Directed by Noushad Saffron, the craft aspect of this movie is pretty weak. In the staging of the scenes or in blocking, we can’t see any effort to enhance the humor. In the case of the writing, the only appreciable thing is that Suneesh Varanad is aware of the socio-political events happening in our state. He has made a list of incidents and policies that can be used against each prominent political party. And then it is like a gallery-pleasing comedy skit that is targeted at an apolitical person. But in all honesty, I don’t think even an apolitical person would find it engaging since the hollowness of the script is not that difficult to identify. From the Karuvannur Bank incident and V Muralidharan’s explanation about the petrol price hike to the mob lynching based on a false accusation, there are a series of topics that get brushed up on in this movie. But the impact is extremely superficial. One particular song that comes in the second half had a nice feel to its credit and I felt really bad for Rahul Raj who was forced to perform in another song.

Porattu Nadakam is a movie that is not really trying to develop something substantially good using its premise. The drama that happens in the earlier portions of the second half, which revolves around the hero and a cow, had immense potential to convey political humor in a subtle way. But the cluttered nature of the screenplay is such that even that main track ended up looking like an easily replaceable side track.