Suresh Gopi and debutant director Baiju 2D’s Thavalam looks like a documentary on a girl child. The director has also inserted masala elements to make it commercially viable.
But at the end this kichadi goes stale, and also misses it’s target audiences. The obvious result is a mangled mess which is melodramatic to the core.
Sivan (Suresh Gopi) is an orphan who is a cobbler by profession but does some menial jobs as well for a living. He saves a girl Kanakam (Sindhu Menon) from some goondas and they get married. She dies moments after giving birth to a baby girl. Sivan finds the going tough but manages to bring up his daughter even while living inside a bus stand.
Thamara (Rathya), a girl who goes around selling small sculptures, loves him but Sivan has no interests in his life other than his daughter. But things become really bad when he is targeted by a goonda and later on, when he is dying out of a fatal illness.
The film is made to garner the lady audiences who enjoy the tearjerkers on TV, which are known to be painstakingly melodramatic and contrived. But even such groups may find it tough to digest some of the amateurish scenes churned out in this movie.
Suresh Gopi does an earnest effort but he is completely out of sync. Sindhu Menon, who is there in the film 
for the first twenty minutes or so, shares zero chemistry with her on-screen husband and is as emotionless like a log of wood.
Comedians Salimkumar and Bijukkuttan appear in between in this tear -jerker which is inane and even insipid. The rest of the cast, including Nedumudi Venu, Rathya and Baby Diya, come up with a relatively better show on the acting front.
Anandakkuttan’s camera presents some nice visuals of Theni but Natesh Shankar’s music fails to impress. Suresh Gopi’s choice of roles is his biggest downfall. It’s perhaps safe for him to get back to his trademark roles, in a Khaki, with the gun intact!
And talking of Thavalam, rent a DVD from your nearest library and watch your favourite movie once again. That could prove more enjoyable than wasting nearly two hours watching this slow coach of a movie.
Movie:Thavalam
Director:Baiju 2D
Music:Natesh Shankar
Cast:Suresh Gopi, Sindhu Menon, Rathya