Thursday, October 29, 2015

അമർ അക്ബർ അന്തോണി (Amar Akbar Anthony) (2015)

Director: Nadirshah
Writers:  Bibin George, Vishnu Unnikrishnan
Cast:       Prithviraj, Jayasurya, Indrajith
Language: Malayalam


The three protagonists are Fort Kochi youngsters from relatively poor families who are also close friends. They enjoy a carefree life. Their perceptions and beliefs get shattered when an unexpected event occurs and the resulting story forms the rest of the movie.

To make matters very clear, this is a film which makes 'Oru Vadakkan Selfie' look like Godfather. And OVS was a film which made 'Chotta Mumbai' look like Godfather. I am referring to these two films with respect to AAA because all of them follow a similar formula of skit like comedy sequences with some serious shit thrown in during the second half of the film. Nadirshah, who is best known for his mimicry and parody cassettes that he used to churn out during Onam, makes his directorial debut with this film. The long series of 'Thank-Yous' which starts off the opening credits (an annoying feature of modern Malayalam films) lists the directorial duo of Siddique-Lal, who are best examples of people who have made transition from mimicry to creating great feature films. Almost all of their films, with the exception of Vietnam Colony', also followed a formula of having a purely comedic first half with the story taking a sudden serious turn during the second half. But they always manage to intersperse comedy during the latter part of the films as well. Whatever be the formula, they managed to create films that are rightly considered as classics.

Nadirshah's formula seems to be sub-standard comedy skits followed by cringy 'Social Warning', exploiting Malayalees' latest paranoia over 'Immigrants' and pedophilia. If that is not enough, he ends it with some Police-sponsored vigilantism. So he basically caters to all kind of audiences, quality be damned,  which explains its commercial success. The comedy shit didn't make me laugh nearly enough and the social message thing is presented in a laughably bad manner and I had a horrible time watching it. Am not really a big fan of these skit like comedies anyway since I can watch some mimicry program if I wanted that. I am not disparaging all films that present it this way as 'Chotta Mumbai' was quite a decent film and 'Idukki Gold' could also be described following such a formula but managed with a degree of sophistication by presenting it as vignettes from the past. AAA is just shit.

To sum up, AAA is an utterly shit film and its commercial success is fucking annoying. As it stands, the top three grossing Malayalam films of all time are 'Drishyam', 'Premam' and 'Ennu Ninte Moideen'. all of which are quite good films. It will be a travesty if this piece of shit film manages to gross as much or beat any of them. It does look like it will. Arrggghhhh..... (ഒരു സിനിമാപ്രേമിയുടെ രോദനം ) 

Rating: 0.5/5   
                                                                          

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