Painkili Review..!!

Painkili is a tiring parody that is cramped with middling jokes and exaggerated portrayal.

Rating – 2/5

With Painkili, Jithu Madhavan is back as a writer after Aavesham. This happens to be a fully-fledged comedy entertainer on the paper that ties two contrasting characters to a rom-com. Sajin Gopu & Anaswara Rajan plays these two protagonists in the film. Anaswara plays a teenage girl who is trying to elope with someone. She is in search of a perfect candidate who could challenge her parents. Well, it is understandable that she has an ulterior motive, which is basically freedom. Her attempts to elope create the perfect comic situation for a film but sadly it isn’t consistent enough to evoke laughter.

These situations are more like a parody or a skit performed on stage. Her episodes try to generate humour but it never exactly try to explore the character. The audience would want a logical explanation for her actions other than plain humour. The makers could have added an emotional conversation any sooner or at the least, subtle details on the character’s plight. On the other side, Sajin’s character was explored far better. The audience can relate to his life, his family of his friends. Honestly, those initial portions were promising enough. But it soon starts to become too loud and exaggerated due to which the comedy becomes annoying. The graph starts to plummet right after Sajin’s unexpected predicament during a journey to Coimbatore. The jokes start to fall apart and the characters that make an appearance for a brief period couldn’t offer anything valuable.

At this point, the screenplay becomes lifeless, there is no interesting element to drive the story. There is a Mental hospital scene, from where Sajin desperately needs a certificate. These episodes are concerning, making jokes out of the patients with great difficulty. These sequences appear like something straight out of a 90s comedy movie. Though the intermission block had an interesting plot twist, the film goes further downhill when the two protagonists start sharing space together. The biggest issue was that Anaswara’s character was missing for a long time and the audience had already forgotten her character arc.

In the latter half, Sajin Gopu had to literally shoulder the movie all by himself. It was too much to ask for the actor who has tried his best to engage the audience. The film’s flaws in the screenplay were very much visible in these portions. It heavily relied on individual comedy skits rather than building the chemistry between the two protagonists. Even now, the makers fail to divulge any details about Anaswara’s character. There was no dramatic turn of events to connect with the characters. It appears like everything that had happened before were just silly plot points that serves no purpose in the story later on. The film quickly reaches the climatic point, where the final act confuses with comedy, chaos and a plethora of emotions.

The writing part fails miserably when Anaswara’s character gets a weird twist. It was even ridiculous while trying to explore her character, highlighting her past trauma. Both the performances of Sajin & Anaswara were fine in a clumsily written film. Abu Salim’s character was interesting, multiple scenes evoked laughter throughout the film. Rest of the actors have also done well. There were several newcomers in the film, who appeared tailor made for the role and brought a sense of nativity in the film. Those characters appeared so real but the film wasted many characters as well.

Among the positives, the portrayal of sexuality in the film in one brief scene was commendable. The dialogue was short and mature, showing the right way to politely turn down a proposal without being offensive. Overall, Painkili lacks substance since it heavily relied on building comic situations.