Review of malayalam Flim Ashwaroodtan

Malayalm Movies >> Review of malayalam Flim Ashwaroodtan

Ashwaroodtan - a truck load of rubbish

There is a limit, they say, for everything. I don't know if our filmmakers have heard it or pretending ignorance or the very likely reason trying to take the viewers for a ride. Whatever it is,a string of movies on similar lines nd I am... What does Jayaraj think of he people watching this movie ?That we are dimwits? That sugar-coating crap would run into packed houses? If that was his thought, then I am sorry Mr Director - we are a socity which boasts of 100% literacy not for nothing. There is something called awareness and if you think you can pack your 2 plus hour of sheer stupidity and present it before us expecting it to repeat a 'Four the people'(which was clearly undeserved), I would rather prefer you dumpng the reels in your trash can.

I am no Suresh Gopi fan; In fact I am just the opposite nd I am not an avid watcher of his brand of movies. I can sit through the whole BharathChandran IPS sleeping even when the entire theatre might roar, shout or go frenzy over his fiery dialogues .The reason for me to see this movie? Jayaraj and my hope that having worked with him in movies like Kaliyattam nd Paithrukam, Suresh Gopi might actually have some acting to do nd Jayaraj might have some story to tell, afterall. How disappointed was I?

The story is about a landlord/protecter-of-all/do gooder of the village .Damn ! I forgot the name of the protagonist (Such was the impact the movie had on me ) .If ever there is a perfect person on earth, it has to be him. I am not elaborating on all those clicehd qualities ;if anyone is interested enough to go throug the pain, please watch it. Long story short, there is a villain ;in fact there are about 5-6 villains who try to bring down our hero .The hero emerges victorious .Now tell, me, haven't we heard the same story a 1000 times? Haven't we got fed up with the same old stuff ?Why on earth did the director think that such a movie might get teh cash bells ringing? That is exactly why I say that I think I've been taken for a ride

What is most irritating is the kind of dialogues that bear no relation at all. Unnecessary jargon - be it slokas from epics, or some stuff about Madame Curie(gimme a break man, how the hell does she come into the picture here) the pea brained dialogue writer(s) have thought that this would impress the poor movie watchers who might applaud each time the hero or the ant-hero blurts out some gobbledygook which I am sure even the dialogue writers might have had a hard time figuring out .Do we really care if Sajeev-Mahesh (story/script/dialogue,i guess) tries to show off their knowledge on varied realms by subjecting us to a torture? To be frank the dialogues seemd to be in a la G S Pradeep mode, with no relation with one another nd no significance whatsoever with the situation.

If there is anything more irritating than the dialogues and the predictable storyline, it's the way the whole movie is shot. I guess that of late, the directors in our land has taken a fascination for a little of camera jugglery .May be to project the movie as hi-fi, in par with high bugdet pictures elsewhere(i am not talkin about the standards of the hi-fi films in India; the less said, the better .And we are here to ape these below-par ones), we are resorting to such tricks. The 'trick', if you can call it so in question is a kind of zoom in on a character 'zwooooosh'(that's the sound u know) nd zoom in on another and in another 'zwwwooosh',zoom in on the third .All this accompanied by a rather irritating 'thud', to add the the 'zwoooosh'. Does jayraj think that he has managed to re-create a Jurassic park or a matrix magic with his cheap camera 'tricks'.I wont blame Jayaraj alone, because I had to bear the same in Balram Vs Taradas sometime earlier this year. This seems to be in a bid to make the promos attractive,in case someone thinks its attractive. But believe me, it added to the irritation of listening to a whole truck load of bullshit.

OK. Now we know that we have a hero who does nothing but run around and save people .And once he catches one villain, he says where the actual villain is. The hero, with his 'bhoothaganngal'(an overdose of puranas,i told you) is now on a run to catch the actual villain who then, on getting beaten up reveals the identity of the real actual villain nd the hero's run continues. Not to speak much about the actual villain, Saikumar. I pity him for playing such hollow characters given his immense potential to do something far better. As mentioned earlier, his job is to blurt out dialogues making sure that line 1 doesn't relate to line2 in any way. In one sentence, he has to speak in a way that no one understands, not even the other characters, not even the scriptwriter,the hapless viewers and not even he himself ! If you take that as his mission in this movie, then yeah he has succeeded. And now we come to the most important character of the movie - the heroine. The heroine comes into the movie as a revolutionary who challenges the existing system of brahminical eliticism and is on her own to help the poor .Now it is this quality of the heroine that our always helping, Mr perfect hero liked and know what, he takes her to his home and makes him his wife (All this happens in a span of about 5 - 10 minutes).How I wish life was as good as this and all people were as good as Mr Gopi. The most saddening part is how degraded has to role of a female lead is in malayalam films these days .My mind goes back to the strong female characters of the bygone era .And just see this movie to see how heroines have become just a necessity for the movie promotions without any character of themseleves. Padmapriya's role, giving promise initially as a revolutionary,simply ceases to exist in front of the magnetic personality of our hero .What a pity !

I forgot to mention that our hero is an all-rounder .There is nothing he doesn't know of .Although he has a lawyer, it's his brain that does the work. And he comes out with the most brilliant of ideas that even an LKG kid might dump as stupid. But then, he is the hero, he comes out victorious.

As for the songs, I liked the song 'Azhakaaloru manjacharadil' and is one reason for me to see the movie .But the director has displayed his fascination for boat-rides and what has come out is another pathetic song picturisation. After his 'lajjavathy' boat ride, Jayaraj has once again, taken it the water-way .The only difference being that while it was kathakali (??) accompanying the dancers last time,this time it's some tribal dance. Needless to say, it spoils the mood of the song. How I wish he had projected a blank screen and just played the song.

Another interesting thing is the name of the movie' Ashwaroodhan'(It can't be represented well in English, another plus point) .Thanks to my high- school malayalam teacher, I could understand what it means. And i dont wonder y the director resorted to such a name after seeing the movie becuase the sole purpose seems to be to show off. Related or not related is a different matter altogether. And just because he named the movie ashwaroodhan, he has managed to find a horse which seems to be so under-nourished that I had to convince myself that it's not a donkey. And to make matters worse, Mr Slimfit Gopi takes a ride on the horse on one song sequence as well.The horse was not shown afterwards .Where are the PETA activists? I cannot imagine the plight of the horse had Jayaraj decided to make Mohanlal his lead character .And just to make sure that the name has to have some resemblance afterall, with the story,Jayraj has put up a metallic horse in front of Gopi's jeep and everytime it comes to a screeching halt, the horse is shown in close-up. Hence derived - Ashwaroodtan !

In a nutshell,this movie is a waste of time, energy(I was booing all along and fell asleep tired towards the end) and questions your level of intelligence. If the scriptwriter duo thinks that they can run a movie to full houses with dialogues like this and with a totally wasted talent pool, sorry, you might as well try running it in some other part of the world where people might find the hero to be superhuman when he utters something like Paraskavedekatriaphobia ! Your movie would be out of the theatres even before you spell the word.

I still can't hide my indignation at being cheated (what else can you call this) by a group of wannabe movie-makers( I won't call this a movie) and hence this long writing.I can go on and on on Ashwaroodhan-bashing, but I don't think it's worth my time. If this prompts at least one guy not to see the movie, I am gratified.

A Friend