‘Daivame Kai Thozham K.Kumar Akanam’ looks, sounds and seems a haphazardly joined piece that hardly manages to hold itself together. A laugh here or another one there is all that it has to offer, and for a film that runs for one hundred and fifty minutes, that is a pretty much hefty price to pay.
The first fifteen minutes of Salim Kumar’s ‘Daivame Kai Thozham K.Kumar Akanam’ rolls like it has a statement to make on every possible contemporary issue – be it social or political – and strikes you as an earnest satire in the making. But the feeling is as swiftly dissolved, when the script collapses in an unseemly heap, and emerges as nothing more than a hollow discourse on gender issues.
Krishnakumar (Jayaram) is a Gramasevakan, who is obsessed with the Central Government’s Swachh Bharath Shauchalaya Yojana. When he isn’t busy building toilets, he rules over his wife Nirmala (Anusree), who persistently rues the life that she has been accorded with, but in vain. When God (Nedumudi Venu) and his aide Mayaduttan (Pradeep Kottayam) decide to pay the earth a visit, they choose Krishnakumar’s abode on the reason that he’s a man who has never ever in his life, demanded anything from God.
Mayaduttan is perplexed when he along with God, land on God’s own country, and find not even a single Malayali in sight. After a brief conversation with an immigrant labourer, God learns that there has been a bus strike and manages to grab a lift with a college tour group. He exhorts the youngsters to have fun, and as if waiting for a cue, they break out into the title song, where faces like those of Nadirshah and Prayaga Martin flash by.
At Krishnakumar’s place, God realizes that things aren’t all hunky dory, especially with Nirmala having borne the brunt of male chauvinism for long. The couple in the midst of a verbal tussle, puts forth a challenge to switch roles – that of the Gramasevakan and of the housewife – and though God warns them of dire consequences, goes ahead with the plan.
For one, the God in ‘Daivame Kai Thozham K.Kumar Akanam’ is emphatically male; and its Nirmala who acknowledges it first, when she confronts him during an argument, and asks if he’s being prejudiced and partial on account of his gender. It’s also the moment, when God very silently concedes to the concept – the universally accepted and very frequently challenged notion that God is essentially male.
As the midpoint bell strikes, it’s time for ‘Daivame Kai Thozham K.Kumar Akanam’ to go down a terribly wrong lane, and it isn’t very long before it gets totally lost. The final twenty minutes are specifically dedicated to depicting how brutal and insensitive the media could be, but the whole stretch of which has a spurious air to it.
The sole highlight of the film, is perhaps Salim Kumar himself in the role of Gopi, a local jeweller who allegedly has struck up a business agreement with none other than footballer Lionel Messi. There is a hilarious football scene where Gopi joins Messi on the ground, and where the former brings the house down with his rejoinders.
There are also the several lows that the film stoops to when it comes to comedy, and with all the talk on gender equality and what not, repeatedly makes a woman panchayat member (Surabhi Lekshmi) blurt out a word that could very commonly be misinterpreted. A few very common WhatsApp forwards embarrassingly find a place in the script as well.
Anusree is undoubtedly the solitary life saver in the film, and proves yet again how she could breathe life into tremendously underwritten roles. Jayaram reinstates himself in a role that we have continually seen him in, and there is hardly anything that he brings in anew to his portrayal of the Gramasevakan. Nedumudi Venu looks surprisingly lost for a God, and Pradeep Kottayam nasalizes it up a bit further than he usually does.
There is hardly anything exciting when it comes to the technicalities either. The choreography in particular however seizes your attention, since it brings back an almost extinct species to Malayalam cinema – a long line of identically dressed pretty women behind the lead dancer, who swing and sway in unison, as if controlled by a remote button.
‘Daivame Kai Thozham K.Kumar Akanam’ looks, sounds and seems a haphazardly joined piece that hardly manages to hold itself together. A laugh here or another one there is all that it has to offer, and for a film that runs for one hundred and fifty minutes, that is a pretty much hefty price to pay.
Verdict: Inept Satire