Movie : Simhasanam
Director : Shaji Kailas
Music : Ronnie Raphael
Cast : Prithviraj, Sai Kumar, Vandana, Aishwarya Devan
Director Shaji Kailas Simhasanam is at best a spoof of some of his own earlier hits.The film doesn’t work because it’s hard to empathize with any of the characters and the lead actors fail to rise above the flawed script.
With larger than life characters seen in umpteen films, awful situations, melodrama and irritating dialogues, this one mostly turn out as unintentionally funny. Shaji, who has scripted the film as well, has made some kind of a curious compilation of some of those already popular scenes from a few select movies.
Madhava Menon (Sai Kumar) is the patriarch of the wealthy Chandragiri family. This �feudal fascist� (as described in this film by one of the villains) is so powerful that the state chief minister comes to his doorstep to solve some political crisis and the natives in the area are being considered his �praja� (subjects). His son Arjun (Prithviraj) is a daredevil as you would have guessed by now and the father-son duo takes on their rivals in true heroic style.
Lakshmi (Vandana) and Nanda (Aishwarya Devan) play the heroines who involve in some sort of a catfight that reminds of the Manju Warrier-Priya Raman tussle in ‘Araam Thampuran’ to get the hero’s attention.
The secular mind of the landlords, their faithful confidants, the quintessential ‘utsavam’ in the temple, the elephants, the kalari experts, the corrupt cops, the wily politicians’ you name it and it’s all there aplenty. Worse still, even the dialogues are mimicry versions from the old movies.
Were the makers of this film sleeping for a decade or so, to suddenly wake up to make this old fashioned misadventure? That is the feeling the viewer gets while sitting through this tiring ordeal, as it is a total misfit during the current times. At almost two hours and forty minutes, the film never seems to end!
With nothing new to offer, Prithviraj looks ineffective and disinterested. Now, it is quite a mystery on why this hero selects some pathetic movies so often in his career!
Most of the other actors have been cast to suit their branded tags. The less said about the two heroines, the better and they seems to compete with each other to come up with the worst performance.
When DVDs of old blockbusters are available and when those classic scenes and dialogues are being aired on TV, do we need a hotchpotch of it all? It’s a mystery how films like this get made.