Jawanum Mullappoovum Malayalam Movie
In Raghu Menon's "Jawanum Mullapoovum", Shivada Nair's teacher Jayasree is married to a toxic husband, Giridhar, played by Sumesh Chandran. Giri is a former Army man with a jasmine allergy who doubts the integrity of his wife for no reason. A crazy Giri believes that Jayasree is having an extramarital affair. He believes it to such an extent that he thinks that she is having an affair with everyone from the newspaper boy to her singing teacher. It's hard enough to tolerate such a toxic guy, but Jayasree seems so used to him that she behaves nonchalantly whenever he says something really bad.
There is no real plot in the film. It involves something as simple as the husband going out of town and the wife facing a predicament with her computer. The movie is set in COVID, so teacher Jayasree has to take classes for students through her personal computer. One day, something happens with the system, and the rest of the movie is about how the teacher deals with it.
There are some supporting characters in Jawanum Mullapoovum who are hardly related to the central plot. Giri suspects that almost every male character is seeing his wife. The other male characters are his drinking buddies. There are a couple of songs showing Giri having fun and alcohol with his friends. The only reason to have these scenes in the movie is that they will give the audience an idea of what kind of man Giri is. I wished there was something more to these male bonding scenes than the time pass value they supposedly bring. In other words, you won't take anything back from these scenes. The same applies to the scenes involving Shivada's character and her daughter, played by Baby Sadhika Menon.
Then there is Rahul Madhav. The moment you see Rahul in any movie, you can guess what type of character he plays in it. Mostly, he plays a creep. Remember the creepy guy he played in Joshiy's "Porinju Mariam Jose"? It's like Malayalam cinema has decided that he is best at playing a creep.
The amazing aspect of Jawanum Mullapoovum is how Shivada's character tolerates the creeps in her life and how benevolent she is to them. I do agree that there are such women in society, but this is more a case of bad writing than art imitating life. This aspect about the quality of the writing becomes apparent in the way the film treats the husband character. It's like it treats almost every act of toxicity by the husband as, well, his innocuous prank. The actors do their best to keep the film engaging. The performance of Shivada, especially, is amazing given the low-brow writing she has to work with. But still, how seriously can you take a film worth an Instagram short at best?
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