Uriyadi

The latest Malayalam movie Uriyadi is directed by AJ Varghese who directed the entertaining light-hearted comedy Adi Kappyare Koottamani. Uriyadi is a victim of bloated scripting. There are so many irrelevant tracks in this movie that are just there for the sake of making this one look like a comedy movie. And towards the end when it takes a drastic turn and becomes some kind of a Shankar movie with social reforming, you will be wondering how this seemingly ludicrous script got changed like this.

The story is set in the backdrop of a police quarters in Palayam, Trivandrum. Senior police officers, the ones who are about to retire, police officers with lower rank and even suspended police officers are living there. The association decides to celebrate Onam with a lot of cultural programs and on the night of the events, a robbery happens inside this quarters of the police officers. The action taken by the police to find the thief who humiliated the entire force is what Uriyadi dealing with.

The clueless scripting is the main error of this movie. The very first scene in this movie was of the Trivandrum police chasing down a biker. I am still clueless about why that scene was necessary for this movie. If the makers were planning to show the ability of the police officers to catch such people, then I must say that they have done a terrible job. I don’t wish to list out the number of waste footages here. Every scene that had actor Baiju (not his fault), the scenes featuring Manasa Radhakrishnan and Sudhy Kopa, etc are a few examples of irrelevant portions in the movie. It was almost like they shot a lot of extra comedy scenes when they felt that the movie lacked the comedy feel. If you look at the central conflict and the end twists, there was scope for a decent thriller. But by adding excessive comedy and abruptly changing the tone of the movie Uriyadi fails to utilize that opportunity.

The usually effortless Siddique wasn’t really getting the rhythm this time. I am not saying he was bad at the role. The usual flow in the performance that he delivers even in mediocre movies was missing here. Aju Varghese is in that typical zone of his and delivers an okay performance. The movie is most interested in using the off-screen aura of someone like Sreenivasan. Baiju Santhosh was funny but he was totally irrelevant to the plot. Indrans goes back to his old comedy gimmicks. The other names in the cast include Sreejith Ravi, Sreelakshmi, Sudhy Koppa, Manasa Radhakrishnan, Prem Kumar, Bijukuttan, etc.

My guess is that if they take out nearly one hour of unwanted comedy from this movie, Uriyadi can become a watchable okay thriller. AJ Varghese’s confusion about how to treat this movie is the main issue. From being extremely silly, it suddenly transforms and becomes a social preach. And in the middle part, the movie invests too much time on events that have no real influence on the end result. Varghese is trying to make fun of too many social issues and most of it doesn’t blend well with the content. What was the need for that entire “Nokkukooli” sequence featuring Noby? The songs are placed awkwardly. Things like editing and cinematography are on the unimpressive side.

In Adi Kappyare Koottamani AJ Varghese blended humor to a properly structured script. But in Uriyadi, Varghese is trying to squeeze in pointless comedy subplots to a one-liner idea. Uriyadi is a movie where you will find yourself questioning the relevance of every scene.

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