Elanjikkavu P.O Malayalam Movie
When a film starts off with as many spelling errors in the 'Thank You' cards as it does in 'Elanjikkavu P O', you sense that not everything is hunky dory in what is to follow. The spelling bloopers that offer gratitude to 'all vishal media' and even 'Chitanjali' over, the film starts telling the story of a teacher who has been serving sentence in the jail, for allegedly having murdered a girl student.
Sivaraman (Salim Kumar) has been in jail for a while now, but his student Lekshmi (Nandini) does not believe that the man has committed the crime. She strikes up a connection, after what seems years, with her school mates Charles (Mukesh) and Rajendran (Riyaz Khan), and the trio decide to resolve the mystery behind the crime.
There are the frequent flashbacks that talk of a childhood romance between Lekshmi and Charles, that have the reek of artificiality all over them. And the grown up romance between the two is even more embarrassing, as in the scenes when Lekshmi opens up a mail box in her ancestral home and unearths the several valentine cards that Charles had been sending her over the years!
It really isn't fun to watch Mukesh and Nandini put up sheepish grins on their faces and attempt to bring in traces of a romance between them. Their efforts are in vain, and there is not an iota of interest in this romantic element that is beneficial to the film.
To add fuel to the fire, there arrives Niya (Vaigha) all the way from the US, and who gets elected as the local panchayat president who doesn't know to read or write Malayalam. It's even more disheartening to listen to the US-bred girl speak in English, making you wonder what language she must have speaking there.
When a new tuition master (Suraj Venjarammodu) arrives to offer classes in Malayalam to Niya, things get worse. The script steadily degenerates from bad to worse, and the few odd jokes that are wedged in between make the whole procedure appear even more difficult to endure.
The climax of the film has to be seen to be believed, and the stage show of sorts that is organized takes inanity to an entirely new level. When the culprits are finally seized, you heave a sigh of relief, not because justice has finally been served, but because the ordeal you have been subjected to, is finally over.
It's extremely difficult to empathise with the characters in 'Elanjikkavu PO', since you can relate to them in no manner whatsoever, because of the strange mode in which they have been penned. This is why the whole film looks like a simulation, and is totally devoid of lifelike features or even substantial dramatic developments.
There is nothing spectacular about the performances either, and all the actors, be it Mukesh, Nandini, Salim Kumar, Riyaz Khan or Shammi Thilakan merely manage to struggle through the mess of a script that they have been asked to play along with. The child artistes are relatively more at ease with themselves.
'Elanjikkavu PO' is a failed murder mystery that starts off from nowhere and ends up nowhere. Preposterous to the core, it has little style and even lesser substance.
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