redchillies

Shaji Kailas’s-Mohanlal starrer “Red Chillies” completes Mohanlal’s transition from the Asset side to the Liability side of Malayalam cinema. A movie that could have been a perfect curtain raiser for arguably the most awaited movie in malayalam, Amal Neerad’s Mohanlal starrer “Sagar Alias Jacky”, falls flat, then digs a hole and stoops low to a level where the audience wonders whether anything can save Mohanlal as an actor. My question is why should we pay for a movie where all Mohanlal does is to keep on saying good things about himself – ideally Mohanlal should pay us for watching his ‘show’.

Shaji has tried to make an OK movie (because the movie is better that Mammooty’s horrid ‘Love in Singapore’), but Mohanlal appears in the second half and completely destroys our mental makeup. Lal should seriously think about donning roles like those played by Ummar, Thilakan, Madhu and NF Varghese. Stopping acting is also not such a bad option either.

Now a decade after ‘Narasimham’, Mohanlal had a nearly wasted decade and malayalam cinema too has wasted a lot of money on him. But the last two years wherein I watched most of Lal’s flicks on day one, has been terrible. Starting with the messed up ‘Chota Mumbai’ through ‘Flash’ and ‘College Kumaran’ and ‘Ali Bhai’ and now ‘Red Chillies’, the malayalam audience has drowned a lot of money and time. And Mohanlal hides behind small victories in the semi-comic ‘Hello’ and the lukewarm ‘Madambi‘. ‘Red Chillies’ is such a terrible movie that, if Neerad’s ‘SAJ’ and Andrew’s ‘Casanova’ don’t make it, it will be game over for malayalam’s finest actor.

Story: In ‘Red Chillies’ Lal plays GOD (again), one of those very fat Gods. He is this Con man, OMR (end of the movie the audience changes it to OMG), based in Singapore who digs oil or some crap like that, and makes a lot of money. He owns an FM station in Kochi, run by nine chicks collectively called ‘Red Chillies’. Lal is almost like a protective patriarch for them, and when ‘Red Chillies’ girls get accused in a multiple murder case, he drags his fat ass down to Kochi to solve the case, fight the villains, and even become an advocate to fight the case. (He wins the case in like 30 secs flat).

Good:
1. Visuals and Technique – Shaji Kailas is still a pioneer there, he even manages to capture the whole of Mohanlal in one frame, only that there is more to a movie than camera and editing.

Bad:
1. Mohanlal: The first half is bearable as Lal is not there. But our dude lands in the second half and starts uttering and babbling whatever comes to his mouth like ‘Humanity has been compromised in Kochi’ and ‘I am the omnipresent universal love’. His visiting card is blank on two sides, and on seeing this half the theater ran out. His rambling act, self-glorifying dialogues, pathetic appearance. Mohanlal seems so low in confidence about himself that he needs foreign chicks to call him ‘my Brad Pitt’ , and rest of the actors to pep him up in every other dialogue. The same Hindu symbols, the same feudal air.

2. Product Placements: Shameful and on the face product placements with 94.3 FM’s catch phrase ‘ton kanakkinu fun’ repeated about 943 times in the movie. With every character talking about Silk Air (another sponsor), and the camera zooming in on Lal’s Samsung gadgets in every other shot. Trashy, shameful, crass act.

3. In a recent interview with Surya TV, Shaji said that Lal was supposed to do voice over in the movie and finally do a cameo. But seems Lal offered to act instead of voice over (analyze that), and the script was changed accordingly. It shows! One of the worst movie released in the past 2 years.

Verdict: Big Flop. Or in Mohanlal’s case ‘Ditto’!

P.S: If you haven’t seen it already. The Bradpitt forward. click maadi 🙂

ppitt1