Super Zindagi Review | One More Debacle to the Disastrous Filmography of Dhyan Sreenivasan

During the routine promotional interview, Dhyan Sreenivasan said that filmmakers are not delusional, and they all very well know how good or bad a movie is, based on the final version. Well, what surprises me about a film like  Super Zindagi is that the story idea is so pathetic that I don’t think anyone with common sense and a little awareness about movies released these days would need to see a version of filmed content to realize that what they are making is utter trash. With a shoddy script about a possible scam, the assembling of the movie made me feel the film itself was a bigger scam.

Sidhu is a jobless young man with zero money and big dreams of owning resorts. One day, he gets a call from a Kannadiga guy he met during one of his visits to Mysore. The guy asks him to help him sell some of the gold he found in his village, and Sidhu, knowing the possibility of making some easy money, takes the help of another man named Mujeeb to do the business. What all happens when Sidhu and Mujeeb try to help this man is what you get to see in  Super Zindagi.

They say that opening scenes in movies have great significance as good films will show us something significant to the plot in that scene. In the case of Vintesh’s Super Zindagi, he is showing us one character who is important to the story in the first scene. But there is a comedy of sexual nature happening that has absolutely no relevance to that scene. So, in a way, the opening scene indirectly tells the audience about the whole movie. There is a slim idea around which the story is built, but everything else is absolutely pointless. The way the film slips into songs, the way it shifts to Bangalore to just show the stereotypical Bangalore life, etc., will make you facepalm.

There used to be a time when Asif Ali used to be the go-to frustrated, jobless young guy for filmmakers. It seems Dhyan Sreenivasan is the go-to guy if the character is a frustrated fraud young man. Dhyan delivers yet another generic and forgettable performance. Mukesh plays the role of Mujeeb with all his typical expressions. Johny Antony is a pointless comic relief just created for the Bangalore episode. Suresh Krishna’s character will feel like a funny one if you watch only two movies every year. Parvati Nair’s only job is to yell at her red-flag boyfriend over the phone. 

Vintesh and his writers (yes, plural) are trying to squeeze in comedy scenes just to enhance the film’s length. A lot of scenes and characters can be easily chopped off on a script level. But the only reason to have them in the script is perhaps to extend the running time by adding shady jokes, useless songs, etc. The brutal honesty of Dhyan Sreenivasan in interviews is so hilarious that I wish someone had recorded his reaction when the team narrated the thrilling climax. The way the characters behave in the movie made me think that “Mandanmar Karnatakayil” would have been a suitable title.

At a time when people are extremely picky about watching films from theaters and OTT platforms are offering good money based solely on the quality of the content, something like  Super Zindagi feels like a nail in the coffin for an industry that has fewer safety nets. The movie was so bad that the projector operator resumed the film within two minutes of the interval block, knowing the audience didn’t have the remote to fast forward; compassion exists.