With no conventional story and is more character-driven, National award winning director Jayaraj's new film `Loudspeaker' is a simple movie with its heart exactly at the right place. Decorated with no special comedy tracks or even a traditional romance, the first screenplay from the director has that inherent goodness that speaks volumes of life in a go.
The movie is all about the relationships between two rare bred men from extremely different strata of society, but more in common than is apparent from the first look. They might have never run into each other, with their stark contrast in nature and life styles and would have hardly given each other a second look, if they hadn't met in these defined circumstances. But the movie throws them together, intertwined in worst of their days and progressively built in the rapport between the extremes, and infuses the spirit of worthy and meaningful life to all in the screen and those who watches them on screen.
The movie offers Mammootty an excellent chance to tide over the recent mimicry, child-play movies and characterisations with a solid role of uneducated Mike Philippose, a barefooted simpleton who lands in the city, armoured with his loud voice, opinions and dazzling wit to stand up with the different level of etiquette's he find in the flats of the city. His arrival is as a kidney donor to ailing Anand Menon, an astrophysicist who returned to his home nation after working in US for the last forty six years. A dejected man who wants to run away from his memories, Menon is turned into the reverse track by Mike, who lives with his memories and snobs about his deceased father and about the silent hamlet of Thopramkudy.
The movie packs a lot of characters like the old man (Janardhanan) in legal tussle with his children, the fighting couple (Kalpana and Reghu) who even doesn't like to see face to face, a secretary of the flat residents (Jagathy) who only has a dog for his company, a group of loud bachelors and a kid who turns a brat, left alone and away from her parents. Some of these laudable characteristics are balanced by weak characters, and superficial emotions but the central character of Mike infuses in all of them the spirit of genuine humanness and to live with temperamental ease.
Jayaraj seems to be juggling with commercial and offbeat traits in one single movie, which at times show directorial, and screenplay flourishes and then jump back to elements of commercial potboilers, like the unwanted fight sequence, and slapstick attempts of pandemonium involving the dog and its owner. But, the director succeeds in keeping the spirit of refreshing do-goodness of the central character and his logic's, sprinkled over in every scenes, delivering an breezy soft entertainer - a nice break from the current trends.
Mammootty lives the role superbly, with his slightly changed hairdo and dress codes and displays his competency in delivering live humour with ease. With sync sound to his support, the actor is free flowing and natural to the core. Veteran journo Sasikumar as NRI Menon, is quite a revelation. Though he isn't very expressive, he has good screen presence and sticks to the demands of the role with his restrained presentation and manoeuvres. The huge bevy of supporting actors including the heroine Gracy Singh, does their parts well and Jayaraj shows that he still retains his knack of eliciting laughs, that he had in his opening films of his career. It must be also noted that Suraj Venjaramoodu and Jagathy Sreekumar are wasted and fails to create the chuckles as expected of their characters.
The picturization of song sequences are probably the department where Jayaraj has little changed. Except the remix of classic hit `Alliyambal' which speaks and portraits heavy nostalgia, all other song sequences have been pictured in same locations with minimalist visuals that lack a inch of gloss, which could have made the sequences more appealing.
Bijubal with his music and background scores does an excellent job while Guna, in camera department also captures the urbane and rural colours with grace. But the sync sound tracks fails to function well as the dialogues of Salimkumar and Cochin Haneef often stoop to inaudible levels. This in turn, has helped the movie as the viewers are forced to watch the movie with big silence. The movie gets tad slow in the final minutes, but the propagated spirit of friendship and goodness in life floats the movie all through without much casuality.
A little more crispness in scripts and care in execution could have made it to the list of the bests, seen in recent times in Mollywood. But now with its noble theme, nice premise and great performances form the lead pairs, the movie ends up as a laudable effort and can be definitely prescribed for a lighthearted entertainment.
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