Pravinkoodu Shappu Review..!!

In the opening shot, we see a murder taking place in a toddy shop and in the backdrop, we listen to a classic 80s malayalam song playing on the radio. It is pitch dark and heavily raining outside. Pravinkoodu Shappu is about this murder investigation and finally unveiling hidden details behind this crime. So, does the film take a different investigation route in this film.? Partially, Yes.

This toddy shop is in the outskirts of Thrissur. At the time of this crime, a few frequent customers were also present. The characters of Soubin Shahir & Chemban Vinod are two of them. Basil Joseph plays the role of a police officer who takes up this case. When the narration about the crime begins, the screenplay highly resembles with an Agatha Christie novel. The suspects are questioned and each one narrates their perspectives. The screenplay uses modern-day internet humour and satire abundantly and a few of them lands well. The screenplay keeps dragging at this point. We see a lot of details, some of them seemed irrelevant or maybe they could have polished those segments. Finally, through another major character played by Chandini Sreedharan, who is married to Soubin’s character, the investigation gets an important lead.

Frankly, the investigation episodes aren’t monotonous. In fact, it was well written when one tries to outsmart the other. But it is not highly engaging since these interrogation episodes were taking a lot of time. And finally, the investigation arc gets an interesting and surprising turn near the intermission block, potentially the only elevated portion from the whole movie until then. The latter half switches the narrative to a different mood. The police hits a roadblock, a parallel investigation begins and another conflict begins to ensue in the final hour. The events are fast paced in the latter half. After the intermission block, the attention of the audience is constantly diverted between different characters. If the episodes in the first hour were followed from the POV of Basil’s character, the latter half switches to other lead characters. For the audience, it is hard to stay with one protagonist.

In the initial stages, Basil’s character takes up the case for a reason and he happens to be grappling with a past trauma. The reasons are revealed but his character does not get to cope up with the past. If his transition stage as a police officer with respect to violence is the intended answer, it wasn’t entirely reasonable. What can be agreed is that he might have temporarily moved on. But his character is left diminished at the end. Shifting focus from his character was important to the story but audience badly needed some answers as well. The revelation episodes worked big time, but the emotional aspect wasn’t completely engaging. The emotions only last for a moment and it dies out completely. And this is the biggest drawback in the screenplay. After devoting so much time in the first half, shifting focus on different characters hampers the flow of the story and building emotions. Probably, this is why dark humour was used in the climax episodes and it partially works.

The technical aspects are brilliant, loved the use of illusion and magic. The art work deserves special commendation as they have dodged continuity issues of the Toddy shop and the surroundings. The direction is somewhat promising but certainly required more effort from Sreeraj Sreenivasan to prepare a more crisper version. The first half definitely had the mood but the irregular cuts and slow-paced narration makes it less exciting. The dialogues are heavily inspired by internet slangs. Finally, the performances are brilliant from each actor. Overall, Pravinkoodu Shappu is a fairly engaging investigation thriller with surprising twists and turns and relies on dark humour and satire.