Grrr.. Review
Kunchako Boban & Suraj Venjaramoodu are coming together for a comic caper which has an interesting theme having close resemblance to a real- life incident. Jay K is the director who has previously worked on the horror movie Ezra. This sounds like a sudden career change but he has been working lately as a crew on such slapstick comedy films.
The film has one of the funniest premise as most of the story happens inside the cage of a lion called ‘Darshan’. One fateful day, the drunken protagonist played by KuBo sneaks into the lion’s cage inviting the attention of the officials. And Suraj, the second protagonist ,is one among the officials who is entrusted to save the day. The ensuing funny moments are what the film has to offer. To be fair, the potential of the story and characters wasn’t tapped enough. The film is filled with comic episodes and each new scenes that follows are just proceedings to the previous scene. It needs to be agreed that the movie lack a proper story or a character oriented plot.
They started off with 2 different characters and their stories running in parallels but once the zoo episodes arrive, they ended up as a namesake. Looks like the makers wanted to focus only on the zoo episodes and make a survival comedy.
The humour was good in most parts as they genuinely created laughs. The makers made sure that the zoo episodes never ends up as a serious crisis. It looks like, sometimes things can go wacky as well. Some of the related incidents go without any major impact. It is just that they didn’t go as funny as intended. Yet again these parallel incidents have a direct attack on the religious superstitions and of course a political satire. Sometimes, when the movie is driven by moments, these things can go forced as well. But fortunately they don’t get to be irritating here.
KuBo as the common man goes neat in the first half as a drunken man while Suraj is brilliant with his comic timing. They do have the most prominent roles in the whole film and the survival comedy part is fine. But it would have been better had they spent more creative time to offer unique comic flavour to the part in the zoo. This could have helped to engage the audience with thrills and surprises. Unfortunately, some moments just go passable and the overall effect goes down with each passing scenes.
Suraj should do more such comic roles as his dialogue delivery and gestures are still perfect. Honestly, his character was better and his part with Shruthi Ramachandran has a much better romantic angle. Shruthi is the biggest surprise from ‘Grrr’ as the audience gets to see the untapped talent in her. Her prowess in humour would be useful for the directors in the future and should not be surprised if we get to see her in more supporting roles. Manju Pillai & Ramesh Pisharody are natural while the rest of the cast does just fine.
The ‘Darshan’ episodes were fine in the opening scenes but when it comes to the use of VFX, the makers haven’t done their proper homework. They lacked the conviction to bring the aggressive lion’s body language and movements. Like previously mentioned, the creative side failed to excite the viewers by building tension alongside humour. The final scenes get bogged down even further which has largely to do with the lack of a proper story. The moments start dying soon after the zoo episode and the makers wanted to finish the movie somehow. The emotional angle and romance are just for namesake in this movie.
A slapstick comedy that is tolerable for some comic episodes but fails to entertain in fullest.
Compiled By Jayaram