Thekku Vadakku Review | An Eccentric Satire That Falls Flat Due to Forced Humor

At one point in the second half of the latest Malayalam film, Thekku Vadaku, the character Shankunni faces the question of the relevance of someone’s win if the opponent does not know about it. Based on the story by S Hareesh, I think the soul of this whole drama is in that statement. Unfortunately, the packaging of this movie as a satirical take with caricature-like characters is so wayward that you neither get to feel the fun side of it nor the philosophy.

Shankunni and Mukundan are the main characters of this movie. They both have a legal tussle over land, and the case has been going on in the court for almost 30 years. The dynamic between the two is a bit weird as they have certain shared interests while being enemies. What we see in the movie is the events that unfold after the verdict of the case and how both these characters react to the outcome.

The treatment is the fundamental problem here. From the initial bits itself, it is very clear that they are trying to mock the idea of ego, and director Prem Shankar chooses this way of making characters pretty eccentric. The pitch of the screenplay was, in a way, forcing the movie to be comical at every point. The forced humor that we see in the first half of the movie, which sort of establishes these characters and their interpersonal equation, derails the movie considerably, and by the time the film enters the second half, you as an audience can’t even identify a solid conflict in the story.

In the second half, when the movie goes into the space of a funeral comedy, some of the lines might make you giggle, but the film is struggling to let the audience know what it wants to convey. The writing is finding it difficult to make the events look organic on screen, and there seems to be a confusion from a making point of view on whether the movie should be eccentric or realistic. And because of the exaggerated situational humor through which the character of Shankunni was going through, his psychotic behavior towards the end feels like a shallow act for the audience.

Vinayakan, as Mukundan, is playing the character entirely in the caricature zone. His stiff body language and dialogue rendering are very consistent. But as I said, a lot of that is happening in a forced manner in order to make the scene comical, and that reduces the charm of that performance. Suraj Venjaramood, as Shankunni, is also in the eccentric zone, but he is a bit more fragile. Hence, from a performance point of view, we get to see various shades of Shankunni. Angamaly Diaries fame Merin Jose Pottackal and Vineeth Vishwam are playing the frustrated sons of Mukundan and Shankunni, respectively. The other major names in the cast include Melvin G Babu, Shameer Khan, and Kottayam Ramesh.

Thekku Vadakku from Prem Shankar has the aspiration to be a satire that mocks the triviality of certain disputes that are just a result of ego. But in order to make the characters look silly, the writing depends on these exaggerated humor bits that mostly fall flat and fail to make the audience laugh. If the mockery of the central characters had blended smoothly with the main thread of the movie, it would have at least been a film that can be labeled as passable.