Basil Joseph plays an engineering student who wants to revive the college fest. Tovino Thomas plays the thorn in his side. Their clash results in a movie where the drama is not deep enough and the comedy isn’t consistent enough. But it’s so good-natured that you don’t feel like complaining too much. That’s the quick review. A longer analysis follows, and it may contain spoilers.
For a film that has been promoted as a fun, festive entertainer starring best friends Tovino Thomas and Basil Joseph, Athiradi has a surprisingly tragic foundation. There’s a horrific death right at the start. And that’s not all. There’s a happy young man who retreats into sadness and the shadows. There’s a family where the mother is no longer there, and it’s not the reason you think. There’s a father, and he seems to be worried all the time. There’s even a gangster who keeps thinking about the time he spent with his mother when he was a little boy, though, like a lot of things in this movie, this angle isn’t developed all that well. The director is Arun Anirudhan, who was one of the writers of Minnal Murali, that terrific superhero drama directed by Basil and starring Tovino. Athiradi is nowhere in that league, and I suspect it isn’t even trying to get there. It just wants to be a crowdpleaser for crowds who want to be easily pleased. That it manages in parts. I don’t mean to distance myself from these crowds. Towards the end, especially, I began to have a good time as the madness began to escalate. But getting to that last stretch – that’s the issue.
The director has co-written Athiradi with Paulson Skaria, and the main story gets going when the Basil character, named Samkutty, joins college. He wants to be a civil engineer, and when he demonstrates why, I laughed at the wonderfully idiotic nature of the scene. You know how some of us like the smell of petrol at a gas station? It’s a bit like that. Basil is in good form in a role that asks him to sometimes behave with the energy of a cartoon character, and sometimes convey emotions that the script hasn’t really built up to. The Gen-Z vibe doesn’t really land, but then, this is a film that works just as well even if we imagine the characters as millennials. Terms like “sapiosexual” and “alpha male” and “red flag” are lazily thrown about, and the payoffs are underwhelming. One of the bits that could have become a good running gag is the fate of this alpha male at the hands of his mother – but again, like a lot of things in this movie, this angle isn’t developed all that well.
Samkutty wants to revive the college fest that has been abandoned, and his big idea is to invite Vineeth Sreenivasan, who plays himself. Tovino, as Sreekuttan, plays the spanner in the works. When we first see the man, he seems like a bad singer who thinks he is a good singer. He also seems like a caring husband, given that he has no “manly” issues in painting his wife’s toenails in public. (Zarin Shihab plays the wife.) But like some “mass” heroes, Sreekuttan has a past, and this past comes into play when he clashes with Samkutty. Tovino is very good here. He plays a man who is a mix of swag and rage and foolishness – a man who is not self-aware at all. In a very funny stretch with Vineeth and Shaan Rahman, Sreekuttan recalls an insult during his music performance on a reality show. Shaan Rahman, later, gets a killer joke about dialling 911.
But while there are parts that work, and the final stretch maintains a manic energy, Athiradi is way too long, and a bigger problem is that it keeps flipping the switch between deep drama and carefree comedy. Riya Shibu plays Samkutty’s love interest. She’s hardly given anything to do in the first half, and even in the second half, the romance comes and goes as it pleases. The film has no real rhythm. The drama doesn’t dig deep enough. The comedy isn’t consistent enough. And the narrative can’t decide whether Samkutty is having something of a hero’s journey or if he’s just an idiot who happens to save the day. But the film is easy to sit through, and the scene-stealers are Vineeth Sreenivasan and Shaan Rahman. Every scene with the duo clicks, and they gamely parody themselves, their films, and their music. I wanted more from Athiradi, but it’s a harmless watch and you walk out with a small smile. I guess that counts as a small win?
