ആട് 2 (Aadu 2) (2017)

Director: Midhun Manuel Thomas
Writer: Midhun Manuel Thomas
DOP: Vishnu Narayanan
Cast: Jayasuriya, Vinayakan, Sunny Wayne, Saiju Kurup
Language: Malayalam

Aadu 2 is the much awaited sequel to 2015 commercial flop, but torrent superhit, Aadu Oru Bheekarajeeviyanu. It has such a cult following that they relented to the demands of a sequel to give us, fans of Shaji Pappan, a chance to make history right. The plethora of sequels that came out in the last decade or so in Malayalam have been with the pure intent of cashing in on the original's popularity and have been mostly duds. When the song came out of Aadu 2, I feared the worst but it turned out to be misplaced. Film works well without reaching the heights of first one and is a laugh riot throughout.

Most of the characters and their awesome BGM intros are retained in the film with addition of few other characters. Film is largely focused on Shaji Pappan, DUDE and their respective gangs. A recurring feature in the first one was the hero to zero transformation of all of its characters after their mass introductions and that is something they cannot rely entirely on this time round. So the nature of jokes is slightly different with it being much more straight forward. That should help its box office but there was more charm to the first one which kept on getting better and better on rewatches. There was also this languidly enjoyable pacing for the first one while for this one, you feel too many things are being crammed. I guess the difference is the episodic nature of first one while there is more jumping to and fro between the various characters in the sequel. Midhun had once cited that this episodic nature might have been putting off the audience.

Another major difference is the nature of main villains. First one really didn't have any while there are some in this one and it didn't work that well for me along with the mass climax fight scene, which the audience lapped up anyway. At two and half hours, it is around 20 minutes longer than it should be and they could've easily shaved off that god-awful item song from it. All said, it is still a very good watch with some great clean comedy. It helps that the people who are watching it already have seen Aadu and know what is coming. Limited release of just 100 screens is adding to the atmosphere with heavy rush everywhere. I did miss many dialogues due to the hysteria and didn't hear any of the Shaji Pappan intro BGM due to crowd noise. Will certainly be catching it again.

Rating: 3.5/5