In director Sethu’s Oru Kuttanadan Blog, Mammootty plays an expat entrepreneur around whom an entire village orbits devotedly. The villagers follow him closely day and night, paying attention to every detail of his life, discussing it and meddling in it whenever possible, as though they have little existence without him. Just like how the film latches onto the star-power of the actor, brushing aside the importance of good writing and staging of scenes. It is a meta situation.
Every living being in Krishnapuram, a lovely backwater hamlet, is a sycophant. The older crowd, predominantly male, need Hari for his money, but are envious of his success and popularity. The young men in the village worship him – one of them authors a popular blog which is mostly about his exploits, while another one almost quits his college to be his Man Friday. In turn, Hari provides the young men with alcohol, free Wi-Fi and dating advice.
Oru Kuttanadan Blog is a bloated drama that stretches its own limits of absurdity scene after scene. It shuns the old-fashioned ‘punch dialogues’, dramatic background score, inane thriller thread, and over-the-top stunt scenes in an attempt to join the recent league of comedies like Theevandi or Godha where the characters hangout in their familiar surroundings, crack jokes and go though something strange or curious.
Here, the narrative falls flat and the banality of the plot comes to light rather soon. The conversations between Hari and his young sidekicks are too bland to be memorable. To begin with, it is hard to pass them off as individuals who share an intimate bond. It is nearly impossible to remember the names of the characters played by actors like Gregory, Sanju Sivaram and Vivek Gopan because they are clones of each other. At one point, a bunch of these young men turn against Hari because he cancelled the Wi-Fi service. The icing on this stale cake is an awkward song sequence where hip youngsters dance to a ‘heart-break’ song about ‘Theppukari’, the untrustworthy women who take innocent men for a ride.
Oru Kuttanadan Blog wears its regressive ideas on its sleeve. The problem-makers in the film are two women who are essentially too stupid to be saved by Hari. One of them, a demure girl, falls in love with a stranger she bumped into on Facebook. She doesn’t know anything about him beyond his first name, but manages to be impregnated by him. This is one trope Mollywood never tires of – Internet and the clueless women. At the same time, the popular blog the film is named after is written by one of Hari’s youth brigade. Let’s read between the lines.
Mollywood’s obsession with Mammootty’s ‘youthfulness’ finds a place here too. Hari is a modern version of ‘Mannarathodiyil Jayakrishnan’. He leads a double life, much to the surprise of the young sidekicks. The man is revealed to have an active network of hip friends in the city. We learn that he is a connoisseur of automobiles, a lover of upscale bikes. Women drift towards him charmed by his swagger and good-looks – something the film keeps shouting from the rooftops every now and then. Every female character in the film is either smitten by Hari or is floored by his heart of gold. This includes Nina Kurup (Shamna Kasim), the new sub-inspector in Krishnapuram’s police station. She throws flirtatious (and misleading) glances at him every now and then, and sticks by him when the villains slander him.
Recommended
Mammootty struggles to fit in as his character is a man in his forties. The actor’s entry scene, around 15 minutes into the movie, is an astoundingly cold moment – it is hard to not notice how made-up he appears, or how hesitant his body-language seems, as though he was pushed into the frame by the director against his will. He doesn’t resemble the man about whom the sidekicks had been ranting relentlessly till then. He stays in a realm above the village’s surface, unattached to the story and Hari’s milieu.
Perhaps this is the maverick yesteryear actor’s expensive way of having fun, poking his critics and fans alike. The cast is dominated by actors who have come to be regulars in his films off late. But then, even if it makes little sense for him to have hired a crew to film him holidaying in the backwater hamlet with his favorite sidekicks, and put together the footage into a feature-length movie, the movie, he knows, will score more bucks than what a smaller, more coherent movie would make.
****
The Oru Kuttanadan Blog review is a Silverscreen original article. It was not paid for or commissioned by anyone associated with the movie. Silverscreen.in and its writers do not have any commercial relationship with movies that are reviewed on the site.