Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Veruthe Oru Bharya, Crazy Gopalan and others

Back from Trivandrum to Bangalore after a 4 day trip in which I got to catch up with 2 films.

Veruthe Oru Bharya has Jayaram in his typical family man role. Directed by Akku Akbar the film is a decent effort from Akku Akbar.

Sugunan (played by Jayaam) is an employee at the Electricity Board and Bindhu (played by Gopika), his spouse, is a house-wife. Sugunan believes that his wife is solely responsible for managing the entire household affairs since he is the earning member of his family. How the gradually strained relationship caused by inflated ego's and inability to trust affect their life and that of their daughter form the rest of the story.

The firsr-half potrays the typical middle-class family life while the end scenes of the movie remind us of a 'Vadakku Nokki Yanthram'. But again, the film is nowhere a classic. Like 'Kadha Parayumbol' the movie owes its success to the crap flicks which have become the norm of the present day.

'Crazy Gopalan' is Dileep back at what he is known for: slap-stick comedies. The promos showed Dileep in various get-ups, but sadly they remained enclosed within poorly made beard wigs and false-teeth. Dileep, I felt, could have shown more sincerity in this area. What made me sad was the script struggling to make people laugh at certain points. Comedy tracks included just for the heck of it and double-meaning dialogues brought in un-necessarily gave me an unpleasant nostalgia of the past Siddique-Lal hits.

No releases for the 2 big M's this Christmas. Mohanlal's 'Red Chillies' and 'Sagar Alias Jacky' await release in 2009. I also sincerely hope that Mammootty's 'Kutty Sranku' and 'Pazhassi Raja' bring a big smile to the Malayalm film industry which have been starved of the commercial plus classic element in cinema for a long time.

Also picked up the dvd of 'Akashagopuram' which unfortunately I haven't had the time to see. This reminds me of one issue which I felt is plaguing not just the Malayalam film Industry but also the Indian film industry to a large extent: The quick release of the original DVD. I was surprised and shocked that the producer of 'Thalappavu' had not yet released the original DVD of the film. Why is our film Industry so un-professional? Aren't they interested in promoting their film? After all this they blame the piracy sector. That is why I felt that the producers of 'Akashagopuram' did a good job in quickly releasing the DVD through 'Moser Baer'.

Before I wind up, Wish you all a very happy and prosperous New Year!

6 comments:

Deepti said...

Nice reviews.. unfortunately i couldnt watcha single movie during my Kerala trip :(

Karthik said...

@Deepti: So you also went to Kerala during Christmas week? I was there only for 3 days. Else could have caught up with more movies? Saw Ghajini?

Deepti said...

I went during the diwali break .. was there for almost 15days :)

Jina said...

Cool reviews..I felt the same!!
Unfortunately my hubby seems to think veruthe oru bharya was like veruthe oru padam...
thank god i found another soul who doesnt think so...
happy new year

Karthik said...

ursjina: Well, yes, it was definitely worth watching. But 'Crazy Gopalan' was 'Veruthe Oru Padam' by Dileep.

mathew said...

Doesnt the name of a movie like "Crazy Gopalan" give a clue how bad it could be!;-P