Numbers can be so paralyzing, can't they? Ever since I put up the last post and it came up as the 199th one, I'd been in a quandary... What should I write for my 200th? It's a big number, a milestone, so I should write something worthy of it! So I kept torturing myself with several options until the weeks passed by... And then I realized, my old perfection demon is at it AGAIN! Way back in 2010, I started this blog (click here if you would like to jump to my first post ) just to be able to fight it!!! Hie thee demon!
So here goes!
We started off celebrating the kids' summer break with Oru Vadakkan Selfie - Vineeth Sreenivasan is a blatant promoter of his home region Thalasseri and surroundings! If we weren't sure of where it is, he even uses online maps to point it out in the movie! :)
Story in a nutshell: Umesh (Nivin) and his cronies are seriously aimless guys looking for the easiest ways to make it big. Finding his father's pressure to join the family business (the proverbial palacharakku peedika which every self-respecting Malayali boy hates!), he runs off to Chennai to make his mark in movies and lasts exactly for a loooooong SIX....days. He gets back home only to find that he is in a huge scrape!
The good: The first half is funny - to all non-parents. I often forgot to laugh to turn and look at my boys to agonize - gosh, please don't let my boys turn out like that!!! Did I detect a certain tension in DH's arm and eyes as he laughed too? Not sure! The song "Enne thallendammava" has become an anthem of sorts around Karthi now. It's not unfamiliar, since it used to be one of my Dad's favorite sayings to rebuke me whenever I refused to toe the line in my childhood :). I would like to hear the intro song once again - because I was so engrossed in all of Umesh's antics at college that I couldn't catch the song properly. The movie, ultimately has a good message - which I will leave you to discover. The anticlimactic climax was also a novelty to audiences who have been fed to the gills with twists at the end of the tale.
The bad: Nothing much really - except those nightmare visions of how boys could go bad! :)
Verdict: Worth watching. Also can be used as a spring board to launch lectures on ideal behavior to kids :)! Paisa vasool!!!
Ennum Eppozhum had been on the Karthi viewing wishlist since it was announced last year. Sathyan Anthikkad's latest makes for a good view initially.
The nothing-given-away story in a nutshell: Vineeth N. Pillai (Lalettan) is a senior correspondent of a leading women's magazine who is bored by routine. His seemingly unconscious slips of the pen make life mildly hazardous for him. The new management in his firm is intent on throwing him out, when he gets a lifeline. An opportunity to interview a lady lawyer Deepa (Manju Warrier) who has been making headlines as a gutsy lady.
The best: The song "Malarvaaka kombathu.." I practically swooned in my seat - the golden voice, the music and the lyrics... wow! Huge appreciation to Jayachandran, Rafeeque Ahmed and Vidyasagar!!! It's a great treat!
The good: The lead performances and as usual, the heartwarming good relationships of the "little people" who populate the Anthikkad world. In this movie it is Kariachan (Innocent) and his wife who fit that bill.
The bad: Manju Warrier should really try to break from the mold of the suffering partner in dysfunctional marriages and go do something else. Also I didn't' like the way the movie showed her to be a super mom - A single busy lawyer finding time to clean a two-storeyed house to perfection, cook smiley-faced chapatis, work late into the night and then getting up at 4 am to practice classical dance! Really, what are the moviemakers trying to say? And Vineeth remaining single because he is blatantly trying to replace his dead mother with another just like her? Disturbing, to say the least. And to make it all worse, busy lawyer finds it easy to keep house, whereas the senior correspondent has to browbeat his freeloading roomie to do all the housekeeping jobs! Gender stereotyping at its worst.
It may be just me, but I found this blatant sexist agenda a huge turnoff. So what if the knight-in-a-white-Nano charges in and rescues the damsel in distress with panache? Yuck, another cliche!!!
Final word: Good in patches, don't take your critical mind along if you want to enjoy the movie!
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