Queen Elizabeth, starring Meera Jasmine feels more like a movie that adores the nostalgic cliches of scriptwriting. The angry and insensitive leading lady transforming into someone who is empathetic and caring is a trope we have seen in many films like Kal Hona Ho, The Proposal (Its adaptation My Boss), etc. Arjun T Sathyan, who previously wrote Amith Chakalakkal starrer Santhosham, is exploring a similar tale of personal transformation with all the predictable elements and a whole lot of peripheral cheesy fun ingredients.
As the title suggests, the movie is about Elizabeth, an independent woman who runs a construction firm and is extremely focused on her career. Nobody really likes her because of her arrogance, and things sort of changed when she went to Coimbatore for a business meeting. The events that happened there make her rethink the way she lived her life till that point, and what we see in the movie is Elizabeth’s efforts to live as a better person from that point onwards.
It is difficult to review this movie without really revealing a key story element. So, SPOILER ALERT! As some of you may have guessed, the event that shatters our heroine is a health scare. We have seen many versions of stories where the main character is about to die, and they are on a spree of doing positive things to make life memorable. To achieve that, Queen Elizabeth isn’t trying for a nuanced approach. The way Elizabeth creates a scene with everyone is so caricature-ish that you just know the reverse of this will happen at some point. And when that happens, the whole scene looks too cheesy, and it is really hard to feel for any of the characters you see on screen.
The writing and the making that prefers a louder approach to everything on screen are the main issues I felt with the movie. Almost every actor is eccentrically making gestures even when they are supposed to just listen. The background score is clearly spoon-feeding the audience on where to laugh with sounds rather than musical pieces. And since the movie’s mood is supposed to be in a Jis Joy-ish universe, the lighting is pretty flat. Since they have sort of shown the climax at the beginning of the movie itself, I was expecting a twist that will mildly tweak the guessable climax. But the jarring turn Arjun has given to the story was a bit too bizarre to digest.
Meera Jasmine has been struggling with dialogue delivery in almost all her “come back” projects, and that issue is still unresolved. Neither the writing nor the performance can make us see that character more deeply in order to empathize with her. The screaming and the cute act are all pretty superficial. Narain, on the other hand, is doing too much with his facial muscles to create comedy. The CID Moosa-ish over-acting wasn’t really helping in making that character adorable. Other than these two, no one else has a prominent role in the film. The supporting cast includes names like Manju Pathrose, VK Prakash, Neena Kurup, Ramesh Pisharody, Shwetha Menon, Vineeth Vishwam, Shruthi Rajnikanth and Mallika Sukumaran.
Santhosham, the previous movie by Arjun T Sathyan, is one of those “positivity” films that I couldn’t sit through because of its hollow script. I have seen that a section of the audience has found that movie likeable. So if your idea of an escapist feel-good movie lies in the zone of a Santhosham, this M Padmakumar movie might feel like a passable one. For me, it was very much borderline cringe.
So if your idea of an escapist feel-good movie lies in the zone of a Santhosham, this M Padmakumar movie might feel like a passable one. For me, it was very much borderline cringe.
Green: Recommended Content
Orange: The In-Between Ones
Red: Not Recommended
