A major chunk of the first half of the latest Dilieep starrer Prince and Family is in the typical zone of a comedy film featuring Dilieep. You have these giggle-worthy small jokes that sort of establish the life of this bachelor hero to the audience. There is even a subplot that addresses the age factor of Dilieep, and it actually made me think that we may have a sensible comedy entertainer about the romance of men in the age category that people generally consider as too old for marriage. However, the script written by Sharis Mohammed takes a drastic turn at the interval point, and the movie becomes this preaching from boomers to Gen Z.
Prince is a fashion designer, and he is running a bridal makeover studio in his hometown. His family comprises his father, mother, two younger brothers, and their wives and kids. Prince is the only earning member of this big joint family, and his marriage is yet to happen. What we see in the film are the struggles of Prince to get married, and also the surprises that came to him when he finally got married.
There is a segment of the audience who believes that cinema should have a message for society. Like, you should be able to come out of the theater with an understanding of the “moral of the story.” If you belong to that audience category, who may have been missing this message- movies in theaters, I would say Prince and Family might work for you in that aspect. I personally don’t buy that school of thought, and like how Lijo Jose Pellissery once said, we have SMS if we wish to spread a message. Sharis Muhammed, who has written movies like Queen, Jana Gana Mana, and Malayali from India, has themes that are relevant in current society in his script. Like the lack of sensitivity among content creators, the urge to get reach by posting anything, etc., are topics that need to be addressed, but here those discussions sort of stick out from the central plot of the movie.
The two halves of this movie have a very contrasting tone. Like I said in the beginning, in the initial patches of the film, they are actually making fun of the actual age of Dilieep with the marriage proposal subplot. But when it comes to the second half, where the movie shifts to its main conflicts, this age barrier vanishes. The sensitivity difference between the two generations is, in a way, the reason for the drama and conflicts in this story. But to achieve that, they are making the Gen Z caricatures, who are greedy for likes and shares. A few years back, when Balachandra Menon tried to make these movies like “Njan Samvidhanam Cheyyum” and “Ennalum Sharath,” one could clearly see how peripheral his observations were about the Millennials. Thematically, Prince and Family is somewhat an “Ennalum Sharath” from a millennial’s point of view about Gen Z and Gen Alpha, and one can see the writer putting his generation and the generation before that on a pedestal to belittle the current ones.
Dileep is in his element in the first half of the movie, and like I said, the subplots that sort of acknowledge his age factor and the willingness to self-troll are creating moments that are typical yet funny. In the second half, the movie’s tone changes dramatically, and it is almost in that slapstick space. Of late, I have felt that this new version of Dilieep is sort of lacking that flexibility he used to have in performing this kind of humor. The movie’s heroine, whose name is still under wraps, gets tremendous aid from the dubbing of actress Vincy Aloshious. You can see how much the dubbing has made a difference to that performance when you look at her performance in one hospital sequence towards the end. Johnny Antony gets to play the Aju Varghese of Dilieep in this movie. In terms of scope to perform, I would say Manju Pillai has a good role in this movie. Bindu Panicker and Siqqique play the role of the parents of the hero, and they are mostly utilized for the way they can handle humor. Dhyan Sreenivasan, Josekutty Jacob, etc., are playing the roles of Prince’s brothers, and they really don’t have much to do here.
Towards the end of the movie, actress Urvashi comes in a guest role, and what her character says in the film has a lot of relevance in the modern-day way of journalism. At one point, Dilieep’s character is saying he is done being the thumbnail of clickbait news. The shift of this movie from being a very pleasant family movie with relatable conflicts to being a lecture against insensitive social media journalism feels very forceful, and Binto Stephen’s debut venture turns out to be a film that depends too much on relevance and less on craft.
