Rohith VS in his debut film ‘Adventures of Omanakuttan’ tries his best to shift away from a prosaic narrative, but his earnest efforts are quashed by a script that runs a bit too long, and gets a bit too weary after a while. Flaunting sparks of a promising film maker every once in a while, it’s a movie that places its entire gamble on an innovative plot device, and partially wins.
Rohith VS in his debut film ‘Adventures of Omanakuttan’ tries his best to shift away from a prosaic narrative, but his earnest efforts are quashed by a script that runs a bit too long, and gets a bit too weary after a while. Flaunting sparks of a promising film maker every once in a while, it’s a movie that places its entire gamble on an innovative plot device, and partially wins.
Omanakuttan (Asif Ali) is an employee with Clintonica, a company run by Chandran (Siddique) that sells hair oil that promises a remedy for baldness. An introvert who is barely able to strike up a conversation with a colleague, Omanakuttan however quickly earns for himself the title ‘Employee of the month’ with a mouth that can do wonders behind the mouthpiece of a telephone.
Perhaps it would have been infinitely better if the film had focused on the one element that makes it specifically dissimilar – the element of fantasy – that is regrettably left unexplored after a while. In a shrewdly written scene, Omanakuttan, who has just adopted an adventurous identity hears a furor and opens the door to see a huge crowd cheering outside. This appealing constituent disappears around half time; the film shifts gears and converts into a jumble of vagrant ideas, including memory loss, mistaken identities and what not.
Running for just about fifteen minutes lesser than three protracted hours, ‘Adventures of Omanakuttan’ is a long drawn out film, whichever way you look at it. And the running time would be of a much lesser consequence, if it were able to sustain the viewer’s attention throughout. But ‘Adventures of Omanakuttan’ has several blocks of extended sequences, some of which at least, stretch it a bit too long, despite the narrative experiments involved.
The latter half in particular runs on and on, with Pallavi Deva (Bhavana) joining hands with Omanakuttan, to discover who the man originally is. Omanakuttan as the half time bell strikes, shows signs of amnesia, and from there on, it’s a long drive that finally leads to the climax.
Once the smoke clears, and the tremors of the numerous twists diminish, one wonders if some deft editing would have brought in a difference. And it strikes you that ‘Adventures of Omanakuttan’ could have been a much more interesting film in less than a couple of hours. While the lethargic pace works in favour of some films, here it seems to have done just the opposite.
All said and done, it should be admitted that ‘Adventures of Omanakuttan’ has the finest performance that I have seen from Asif Ali, till date. It’s a shame that this amazing actor hasn’t yet been offered what he is truly capable of, and in a fabulous sequence in a bus, that involves a dispassionate conversation with a fellow passenger (Shivaji Guruvayoor), Asif Ali is a sheer pleasure to watch. This single scene is reason enough to believe that we have hardly seen the actual actor in Asif Ali, and that he has been merely languishing away in roles that hardly require the true performer that he could be. There is Bhavana too, who does her best as a researcher in paranormal activities, and Saiju Kurup in a brief, yet notable role.
Rohith’s endeavour is an admirable attempt, but one which could have been built into something much bigger with a punchier script. Leaving a lot of mixed messages all around, ‘Adventures of Omanakuttan’ turns out to be intermittently engaging fare.
Verdict: Average