‘Aanakkallan’ is a disappointment of colossal proportions that makes you want to reach out to Biju Menon and point out that he needs to take a breather. One long look at the kind of choices that he has made of late, and he should sense that it’s time for him to perhaps take it a bit slow, lest the crowd enthusiasm in his films drops down like a stone tossed from the top of a hill.
Suresh Divakar’s ‘Aanakkallan’ is a disappointment of colossal proportions that makes you want to reach out to Biju Menon and point out that he needs to take a breather. One long look at the kind of choices that he has made of late, and he should sense that it’s time for him to perhaps take it a bit slow, lest the crowd enthusiasm in his films drops down like a stone tossed from the top of a hill.
Udaykrishna’s plotline is one that does not merit a detailed analysis, and I would simply leave it at that. What the script writer has apparently done, is to cash in on the popular image that the film’s lead star has cautiously built over the years, and formulate a story line that would hardly qualify as a commendable tale.
The murder mystery at Ananthapuram Kottaram has taken everyone by surprise, and Kallan Pavithran (Biju Menon) is let loose by a DYSP named Esthappan (Siddique), the investigating officer for the case, with sinister intentions. It’s a long winding tale henceforth, and one that is punctured repeatedly by the slips and slip-ups in the script.
There is an array of characters that Udaykrishna parades before us, and at the end of the day, there is not one whom you would carry back home with you. These cardboard caricatures move about futilely, mouthing inane dialogues, that more than a few times, tests and challenges the ordinary viewer’s patience.
The repetitiveness and the familiarity that permeate the entire proceedings, almost find an echo in the police officer’s words who loudly proclaims that the dialogue that he is about to utter has been mouthed quite a few times before. This is one of those rare moments of self reflection that the film indulges in.
Questions are bound to arise as to what makes an actor with such potential as Biju Menon pick films as these. By adhering to the nonsensical demands that are laid out in scripts as these, the rock hard sensibility that was so evident in his earlier choices seems to have disappeared and instead the much dependable, much adored actor looks like he has been swayed by tremendous misjudgement.
This is a script that entirely banks on the humour that it hopes to generate. But where it seriously falters is in the sequences and situations that it generates for the purpose. It’s a uniformly laid out hotchpotch of recognizable events that makes you want to tiredly hunt around for that last bit of popcorn left in the bucket.
There are several other actors too – Anu Sithara, Sarayu, Shamna Kassim, Siddique, Suraj Venjarammoodu, Dharmajan and Hareesh Kanaran just to mention a few – who have all been caught up in the fray. When it rains, it pours, and there is hardly anything redeeming about the cinematography or the background score by Bijibal even that sounds out of place, and which would have been splendid had it been crafted for a sensible film.
‘Aanakkallan’ does remind you of some of those films of the ‘90s that centred around the grandeur of a traditional ancestral mansion in Kerala. One believed all that was gone, and believe it or not, saunters in Udaykrishna and team who tries pouring some old wine into an older bottle and ends up spilling all of it, all over the place.
Verdict: Tiresome