Pushpaka Vimanam Review | A Spoon-Fed, Watered-Down Version of Run Lola Run

There was this movie named Overtake in Malayalam that was released in 2017. It was a spoon-fed ripoff of Steven Spielberg’s Duel. Duel was one intense thriller where Spielberg never bothered about giving backstories to the audience, and the chase was enough to captivate you. But when it became a Malayalam film, there was an entire subplot about the mystery man who drove the truck. I am talking about this in my review of the latest Malayalam fantasy thriller, Pushpaka Vimanam because the movie basically is like the Overtake version of Run Lola Run. Written in a very amateurish and spoon-fed manner, this diluted time fantasy will work if you have not seen many fantasy films in your life.

Ajay is our hero, and he is a nurse. He has a close friend named Agrah, who has moved to Ajay’s city and is living the life of a cab driver. At one point, Ajay’s wedding gets fixed, and a few days before the wedding, he gets involved in an accident, and a person dies in that accident. Even though Ajay managed to cover up that incident with the help of Agrah, he happened to receive a video from a stranger on the day of his wedding, which showed him handling the dead body. How Ajay and Agrah handle this situation is what we see in Pushpaka Vimanam.

Kishkindha Kaandam is running in packed houses across Kerala, and it has even received appreciation from other states as well. I am saying this because the makers of Pushpaka Vimanam may have this argument that the commercial compromises and dilution of an impressive concept is to accommodate all kinds of audiences. This way of underestimating the audience’s intelligence is the biggest mistake of Pushpaka Vimanam. From the hero to every person around the hero, there is a series of character introductions at the beginning of the movie, and it almost felt like a commercial Tamil film that would have looked okay twenty years back. Then, the movie walks through a lot of irrelevant humor and romance just to reach that point where Run Lola Run began.

You can get inspired by the concept of a film to make a different version of the same concept. Here, when you see director Ullas Krishna and writers Sandeep Sadanandan and Deepu S Nair trying to use the concept, it feels like a very shallow implementation of that idea. The looping is very much on your face, and there also you can see this underestimation of the intelligence of the audience as they are showing us what all happened in all versions through flashy edits. The summersaults and semi-parkours Siju Wilson has done in this film feel very forced, and you almost feel like saying he could have easily walked and saved 5 seconds. The background score at times elevates the scenes, but the songs were largely forgettable, and that is something we don’t expect from Rahul Raj.

I think Siju Wilson was hoping to mount this movie as something that will show him as this cool action hero. As I already said, he is doing all these physical stunts while he is running from one place to another. There was one moment where he winked at a kid who was amazed seeing him flip. The wow and the wink looked really odd. Balu Varghese as Agrah is in his typical anxious womanizer elements. Since the movie’s focus is on what happens in the second half, a majority of the cast, which includes names like Lenaa, Sidhique, Namritha MV, etc., is irrelevant to the story. While Sidhique’s “Muslim” dialect sounded very artificial, it was a sad sight to see Manoj KU in an absolutely useless role. Padmaraj Ratheesh and Dheeraj Denny have roles that are significant to the story.

If you are someone who has seen Run Lola Run, then I would say there is absolutely no need to watch this shallow adaptation that has no craft charm to its credit. In order to find this imagination enjoyable, I feel your exposure to fantasy concepts should be extremely minimal. The movie is so dry in terms of craft that the Chitraguptan cameo and casting felt like a drastic measure to salvage the film.