So finally after quite some effort to get tickets (unusual for a Malayalam movie in Bangalore) I managed to see the much awaited ’2 Harihar Nagar’. Everyone was talking about it, some to the extent that it is the best movie in Malayalam in a long time, which was quite believable looking at the standard of some of the recent flicks I had seen.

This post is not about a review for the movie, so I’ll keep it short. The movie was just about ok. First half was excellent with some good humour (if you can excuse some really bad PJs in between). Second half was at best average, too much emo and twists and turns. But enjoyable anyway. Lal (the director and producer) however has realized the power of nostalgia. Solely due to this, the movie is going to make big bucks. It works on that feeling you get when you think of the golden age of Malayalam cinema that ‘In Harihar Nagar’ was part of.

I was probably 5 years old when the original was released and I remember going to the theatre with my parents and cousins for this. My mind was too young to really grasp the full crux of all that was happening on screen. But watching it again (and again) during adulthood, made me realize how ‘real’ this movie was. The basic plot was too outrageous to be real, but what I mean are the fine details. Every silly joke in that movie, I have seen played around me or I can imagine being played around me. That was the real brilliance behind the original and why it turned out to be a cult classic in Kerala. Every person who has some ‘malluness’ in him, would know those punchlines by heart.

I have heard loads of complaints from my non-Keralite friends, saying that Malayalam films are too real (won’t say that about the recent ones though), that there is no feeling of escapism in them. Well I love ‘real’, and I think most Malayalees do too. Maybe we didn’t need that escapism, maybe it’s already provided to us by all the ‘gelf’ money, lazyness and all the booze that we didn’t need them in the movies. But ‘real’ films owned the market in Malayalam and probably that was the major reason why the recent ‘superhero larger-than-life’ films fail. They should go back to making films like they used to! Those Mohanlal ‘unemployed’ flicks, Mamootty’s family movies, Mukesh’s ‘fraud’ movies, Jayaram’s ‘how-to-escape-from-a-big-mess’ flicks, Padmarajan’s classics, Sreenivasan’s satires… aww.. it was such a beautiful world!

I got bit by the nostalgia bug again! Back to those old cds (.avi’s rather)… ;)

A sleepy Sunday evening and I was wasting my time on my laptop. My roomies suddenly pop out with the idea that its been a while since we saw a movie. Well, having spent half of the weekend in hibernation I thought I should give my body a stretch and I nodded. The only tickets that were available at such short notice in PVR (unfortunately the only theatre at walkable distance from our abode) were for Ram Gopal Verma’s Phoonk. Ok, so we thought let’s scare us a bit.

We thankfully missed out on the first 10 minutes of the movie owing to a faulty ticket machine. Hmm.. but the movie began pretty well actually in retrospect. The acting was ok, but then nothing scary seemed to happen. Then again I thought they were just preparing us for that big 5-lakh rupee moment. Well, the thought and the wait persisted till the end. The general pattern was to build up some excitement, focus on some random objects ranging from a giraffe to Elmo to a pic of Lord Hanuman and then suddenly fade out to daylight without anything happening. There was just one slightly scary scene in the whole movie. Other attempts were too cheesy and the entire theatre audience was laughing, me included, during those supposed-to-be-BOO! moments. My friend, Jithin, kept defending the director (don’t understand why, but he has this habit of liking all the worst movies on planet Earth) saying that what else could he do in a horror movie? Well for starters, he could make me scared for god’s sake!

Not everything was bad. Amongst the positives the movie was only 2 hours long :) and didn’t use too many B(ollywood)-grade special effects (when RGV had a chance to actually make it worse with those added in). The real positive was the camera work though. It was just brilliant. Sad it was wasted on a poor movie. The long single shot of the kid entering school and the camera panning to crow.. well masterpiece!

All in all, I don’t recommend this at all. Quoting Arnab Goswamy from Times NOW, “If you wan’t to watch something really scary, try RGV ka Aag” but don’t waste your time and money on this! Should have stayed at home and slept!