Malayalee From India Review - So Random and Inconsistent at Most Parts!

Ashwin Ram

Malayalee From India is a comedy drama starring Nivin Pauly in the lead role. Dhyan Sreenivasan plays a prominent role as well. It is directed by Dijo Jose Antony of Jana Gana Mana fame.

 
Premise:
Nivin Pauly keeps involving himself in small street fights without going for a job. One day, he gets caught in the middle of a major communal clash. His family members pack him off to Dubai for work to safeguard him from the ongoing problems. His life over there forms the remaining story.

Writing/ Direction:
The first hour was very delightful, it can’t really be described as a dark comedy, the humor worked refreshingly well no matter how serious the situations were. The characters had their own uniqueness and purpose to stick around, even the rat metaphor was smartly used. The film was engaging till the interval not just for its fun value, there were some genuinely sensible moments placed at the right spot, the conversation between a folklore artist and a Muslim woman for example. The midpoint was set with a conflict that exactly resembled the one in ‘Aadujeevitham’, however the treatment in the latter is different. All the good elements suddenly vanished and the second half became a complete mess. Primary reason is that the story never took off, in the sense that there was no clue whatsoever to identify in which path the film is flowing towards. Even the level of jokes became low-class in the final hour by trying to offer laughter with gay approach and snoring problem. The logical loopholes are beyond limits, Nivin Pauly calls home in a snap from the middle of a desert, he travels to Pakistan very casually with an Indian passport and what not. The emotional connect is zero and the film hardly offers to have any empathy over Nivin Pauly’s character but he gets a legend like stamp at the end which landed as a laughing stock.

Performances:
Good acting by Nivin Pauly, his carefree attitude suited his stature aptly and it felt like he was back to form when the humor was falling in place. Dhyan Sreenivasan played his part well until the point he had scope. The Pakistani character in the second half was likable, but his closing situation was lame that he didn’t create any impact. The artist who played Nivin Pauly’s mother rocked it with hilarious timing comedies.

Technicalities:
Fine music throughout, the songs were very decent and had that commercial presentation with the choreography. Background score is steady enough to keep the happenings coherent unlike the screenplay. Very ordinary cinematography on all aspects, the color tone and the angles were normal, there was no aesthetic sense even in the potential desert sequences. Editor must have delivered what the filmmaker wanted, can’t expect much tricks when there is no clarity about the story flow.

Bottomline

A crowd-pleasing first hour with many enjoyable stuff, the film goes mindlessly path-away after that. It was so random without a proper story narration that started somewhere, flowed to its convenience and ended on a totally opposite pole.

Rating - 2.5/ 5