Everyone was going nuts over how amazing this movie is, so I watched it on Amazon Prime to know what the whole fuss was about. Enough to say that I was left underwhelmed by how bland it was except for the amazing performance by Fahad Fazil.
1) None of the four lead characters manages to evoke any kind of empathy because, for the average viewer, they are impossible to relate to. Two of them are jobless delinquents who get drunk and get into bar fights with each other. The other two are a child and a mute respectively, neither of whom do not have much to do in advancing the plot. There is this scene in particular, where Saji cries in the arms of his therapist, praised by critics as the most touching moment in the movie. It just comes off as melodramatic to the point of being unintentionally funny. In fact, the only character in the whole film who does elicit any sort of emotional response from the audience is Shammi, the antagonist.
2) The mute guy (Boney) and his love interest (Nylah) just seem like completely useless background characters who could have been written off without affecting the story much.
3) The movie doesn't make clear what's the exact relationship between the four lead characters. All I managed to understand from the scene where Bobby tries to explain it to Baby was that some of them have the same father, some of them have the same mother, and Saji and Boney have neither in common.
4) Even though the movie attempts to portray empowered female characters who don't hesitate to question male superiority, it indirectly feeds male entitlement in another way: by showing lazy, alcoholic, good-for-nothing men with serious anger issues win the affection of strong, independent women by merely existing, it feeds the idea into the heads of mediocre men that they deserve female attention too.
Fahad Fazil's acting proves to be the sole redeeming feature of this otherwise bland and seriously flawed movie that does not deserve the kind of critical appraisal it has received.
1) None of the four lead characters manages to evoke any kind of empathy because, for the average viewer, they are impossible to relate to. Two of them are jobless delinquents who get drunk and get into bar fights with each other. The other two are a child and a mute respectively, neither of whom do not have much to do in advancing the plot. There is this scene in particular, where Saji cries in the arms of his therapist, praised by critics as the most touching moment in the movie. It just comes off as melodramatic to the point of being unintentionally funny. In fact, the only character in the whole film who does elicit any sort of emotional response from the audience is Shammi, the antagonist.
2) The mute guy (Boney) and his love interest (Nylah) just seem like completely useless background characters who could have been written off without affecting the story much.
3) The movie doesn't make clear what's the exact relationship between the four lead characters. All I managed to understand from the scene where Bobby tries to explain it to Baby was that some of them have the same father, some of them have the same mother, and Saji and Boney have neither in common.
4) Even though the movie attempts to portray empowered female characters who don't hesitate to question male superiority, it indirectly feeds male entitlement in another way: by showing lazy, alcoholic, good-for-nothing men with serious anger issues win the affection of strong, independent women by merely existing, it feeds the idea into the heads of mediocre men that they deserve female attention too.
Fahad Fazil's acting proves to be the sole redeeming feature of this otherwise bland and seriously flawed movie that does not deserve the kind of critical appraisal it has received.