The new Malayalam movie Soothrakkaran has two heroes; Gokul Suresh Gopi and Niranj Maniyanpilla Raju. While watching the film I was wondering whether these two actors told their star dads about committing to this trashy subject. 10 minutes into the film, I could sense the terror and trust me it never showed any signs of improvement. With the two heroes and the heroine competing with one another on who will win the season’s Razzie awards, Soothrakkaran is not even an unintentional comedy.
Sreekkuttan and Aravindhan are the sons of
two business partners. Aravindhan’s mother passed away and so Sreekkuttan’s
family is like home to him. When the third business partner in their fathers’
business died in an accident, his only daughter Aswathy comes to meet them. Now
the movie shows us what all changes with her arrival and also the real reason
behind the third partner’s death.
If you read that plot summary, it won’t seem like a bizarre one. But this wafer-thin idea gets stretched out as a movie in the lamest of ways possible. There is a love triangle, there is a murder mystery and at the end of it all there is a big message literally written on the screen by the makers against the usage of drugs. Well, let me just say one thing. After making a 147 minutes long movie, if you still have to display a message and awaken the audience, that pretty much shows how bad the making is. The overflowing “goodness”, racist “sundari” jokes, characters doing the obvious things one see in movies when someone is about to kill them, police doing investigation as if they are spoofing Sony TV’s CID and actor Siddique doing a well-acted cameo that literally has zero relevance in the whole film etc. are what I could recollect as major events of this movie.
Both Gokul and Niranj have to be more cautious about choosing scripts if they have any plan to have a good career in the industry. This is definitely not a movie where I would say the actors were good but the writing/ making was bad. Almost everything here is terrible. Gokul is largely imitating his father’s iconic character Chakochi and there are some deliberate off-screen references and I must say that all of that just showed how shallow the content was. Niranj is someone who is yet to prove his caliber on the silver screen and the good-looking actor needs to work on his acting chops. Varsha Bollama has this one single naïve expression in the whole film. Lalu Alex, Vijaya Raghavan, and Santhosh Keezhattur are the cool dads. Talented Shammi Thilakan gets to do a pointless caricature villain. These days Jacob Gregory seems to be very selective about picking crap films. Padmaraj Ratheesh is there as a police officer who looks terrorizing but the dialogue delivery is still flawed.
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Anil Rraj, the director of the movie seems to be a fan of hero worshipping films. Niranj’s introduction scene is by showing him as a good young man who was willing to buy a bottle of water to our heroine who gave him Rs 2000 to buy one bottle of water. Gokul is introduced as someone who vandalizes a shooting set when the director misbehaves with our heroine. How are they coming up with such great imaginations? Wichu Balamurali is the producer, co-writer and music director of the film. I don’t know about the production aspect, but the writing and music of this film are pathetic. He has used the Charlie song in the BGM and one song is almost a replica of Adada Mazhada from Paiyya. At the beginning of the film, there is a gross comedy scene of men trying to ogle at a girl’s cleavage and in the very next scene, the same girl is given counseling by hero’s father on how to dress properly. And the makers are so sure that what they said is patriarchal crap, the hero immediately covers his dad by saying feminists will criticize him. It reminded me of the “I respect women” dialogue of Mammootty from Masterpiece. The quality of the technical side is extremely shoddy.
If Soothrakkaran was released 10 or 15 years back and had a better cast and crew, it will still be an outdated film. Good films add layers to the central element. Bad films will add cluttered subplots and rotten jokes to a cliched element. And on that scale, this is a great bad film.
Good films add layers to the central element. Bad films will add cluttered subplots and rotten jokes to a cliched element. And on that scale, this is a great bad film.
