Writers: Vinu Joseph, Santhosh Echikkanam
DOP: Jebin Jacob
Cast: Biju Menon, Neeraj Madhav, Anjali, Dileesh Pothen, Soubin Shahir
Language: Malayalam
Shajahan (Biju Menon) is a failed entrepreneur from Fort Kochi and he gets the idea of producing a soft porn film from an MBA friend of his (Basil Joseph). He sources money from a few people and takes off to Madras with his amateur director friend to get the film made. Film is about the struggles that they face while making the film in what the director intends to be told in a comedic manner.
I had recently read an article, probably a Facebook post, which contrasts the treatment of village prostitutes by Mohanlal's characters in Spadikam and Naran. Kerala society is getting more and more conservative these days and this is reflected in these two films which came a decade apart. In Spadikam, Aadu Thoma sleeps with Silk Smitha's character and is not ashamed to flaunt this relationship of his, especially when it serves the purpose of riling up his father. In Naran, Mullankolli Velayudhan acts as the moral police of his village by sleeping outside the home of Sona Nair's character and thus stopping her from doing business and negatively 'affect' families.
Rosapoo ends up in the 'Naran' camp as it goes all preachy towards the end. Even during the course of the film there are large tonal inconsistencies throughout when it comes to Neeraj Madhav's character. He worships Bharathan and Padmarajan and is reluctant about directing the soft-core film. He makes changes in script to make it more politically correct at the same time falling in love with the actress. She is at first flirting with him but as soon as he expresses his love, she is heart-broken to see that he is also seeing her as an object. Tone of the film is all over the place. Characters in it are very exaggerated and it doesn't work always. The first act of the film in Fort Kochi (Drones, drones and more drones) is plain boring and things do pick up in Chennai only to fall off a cliff little bit later. You get the stereotyped Muslim characters and their practices. The age difference between marrying couple among Muslims was shown in a very mature manner recently in 'Parava' and in this film you get a totally fucked up version of it just done for comedic effect. The film within the film derails while they are making it and I guess the same thing happened tothe film as well without anything meta about it.
Rating: 1.5/5
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