‘Aana Alaralodalaral’ tries to make the best of what it has, but the sad thing is it doesn’t have much, and the little it has, has an outmoded air to it. The ultimate result of this trumpet that lasts for a couple of hours but which seems and sounds much longer, is nothing but mediocrity, and that too, stacks of it.
Dileep Menon’s debut feature film ‘Aana Alaralodalaral’ restricts its complexities to the pronunciation of its tongue twister title. He takes us back – in fact, far, far back as in the nineties -when Malayalam cinema had a bountiful of films where reason took the back seat, and the sole driving force that propelled them ahead was some mindless mirth.
Vineeth Sreenivasan plays Hashim in ‘Aana Alaralodalaral’, for whom its redemption time. He has made a gala return to his native land Vaikundpuram, from where he had been driven out in a not-so-distant flashback, following allegations of theft. The young man has found love in Parvathy (Anu Sitara), and has a few scores to settle on his second coming, a major one of which involves a tusker.
The grandeur that the elephant Shekharan Kutty (Nandilath Arjun) is, could appeal to lovers of the giant animal, and true to the title of the film, he shares almost an equal screen space with the male lead of the film. But apart from the initial interest that the pachyderm generates, the script offers the animal a role that lets it be little more than an embellishment and a rather enormous one at that.
‘Aana Alaralodalaral’ is replete with situations and sequences that you have been a part of, and when Hashim gets hold of Shekharan Kutty, along wades in his grand mom Hajira (Tesni Khan), who puts up an unlikely demand. Sequences as these to build up some merriment are there all through, and mostly all over the place.
The film takes a few pot-shots at social issues as well, religious concord being just one among them. That they make transitory statements is one thing; what is of greater concern is that they are conveyed through flawed humour and jokes, which could turn out detrimental to a comedy. Everyone around deserves better, and this includes the viewers as well, and its only a matter of time before the caricatures wear thin and nothing but goofiness remains.
The basic plotline is already a dead end, and if almost everything about it feels disappointingly familiar, there is nothing but the script to blame. Even if you are in a disposition to accept those scattershot laughs and pay no heed to anything else, ‘Aana Alaralodalaral’ never really rises above its stature of being a hodgepodge of wasted opportunities.
Vineeth Sreenivasan as Hashim looks terribly lost in this huge crowd, as much as Visak Nair does as the mahout. Anu Sitara is a distant cry from the Malini that we saw her as, in ‘Ramante Edan Thottam’, and in ‘Aana Alaralodalaral’ she resignedly adapts herself into the customary heroine mould. Suraj Venjarammoodu, Hareesh Kanaran, Dharmajan Bolgatty, Sreejith Ravi, Vijayaraghavan, Mamukkoya, Innocent, Bijukuttan – the list of comic actors is pretty endless, and yet the laughs on offer, far from proportional.
‘Aana Alaralodalaral’ tries to make the best of what it has, but the sad thing is it doesn’t have much, and the little it has, has an outmoded air to it. The ultimate result of this trumpet that lasts for a couple of hours but which seems and sounds much longer, is nothing but mediocrity, and that too, stacks of it.
Verdict: Disappointing