Namasthe Bali Malayalam Movie

When it finally grinds to a halt, 'Namaste Bali' looks like a badly made travel video that someone cooked up while the cast and crew were away holidaying in Bali. If I were you, I wouldn't dare touch this one with a barge pole. No Namaste. No Bali. Feb 28, 2015 By Veeyen

'Namaste Bali' is a dumb, scattershot wannabe comedy that is dogged by daft dialogues and witless humour. A sheer embarrassment to all concerned, it's a tidal wave of misery for the viewer that is not even funny by mistake.

Annamma (Roma) and Chandi (Aju Varghese) are engaged to be married. Annamma starts weaving dreams of their glorious future, when Chandi flees to Bali, leaving her and their wedding in the lurch. A determined Annamma leaves for Bali as well, intending to find him, and comes across a world renowned photographer Sunny (Manoj K Jayan) during her stint there, who transforms the ugly duckling into a swan.

For the most part, 'Namaste Bali' makes no sense whatsoever since the story that it plans to tell cannot be regarded as a tale of sorts. Within minutes into the film, you realize that Bali is the silliest excuse that the film puts forward to shift its location there, since it wouldn't have made the least difference if Chandi had fled to Kottayam.

So off Annamma goes to Bali, and quite predictably gets stranded on the island with none around to support her, until Tony (Balu Varghese) drops in straight out of Fort Cochin, and offers her refuge. When the weird photographer turns up, the dissonance is complete, and they take to seeing Bali with a vengeance, since there is no tale to tell anyway.

Sunny keeps telling Annamma that she needs to let herself free, 'loosen up a bit' and enjoy life. She takes it up as a challenge, and sheds her Indian attire to sport miniskirts. Partying through the night, she wakes up behind the pool and finds herself enlightened. Some strange notion of liberation indeed, this!

It totally beats me how a film like 'Namaste Bali' gets to be made, when it has so little if not nothing to offer in terms of entertainment. I'm talking of entertainment since any other objective would sound atrocious in this specific scenario.

There can be no discussions on the story as such, and the film that runs for just about ninety nine minutes is a mere succession of absolute non-happenings that make no sense whatsoever.

Roma could not have had a clue as to what she has been asked to do in 'Namaste Bali' and Aju Varghese and Balu Varghese continue to sport new-gen beards (as a character in the film affirms) and mouth supposedly funny lines. Manoj K Jayan sports an unbelievably ridiculous wig, and is way out of place.

Here is a rarity of a film that I will not recommend even to those of you who are on the lookout for a perfect nap for a while. Sleep eludes you when you are watching 'Namaste Bali', and you cannot run off from the torment that it intends to put you through.

When it finally grinds to a halt, 'Namaste Bali' looks like a badly made travel video that someone cooked up while the cast and crew were away holidaying in Bali. If I were you, I wouldn't dare touch this one with a barge pole. No Namaste. No Bali.