'Don't Trouble the Trouble' review: Fahadh Faasil anchors this charming but uneven fantasy

When the trailer of Shashank Yeleti's 'Don't Trouble the Trouble' arrived, the film seemed to belong to a familiar strain of children's fantasy: a magical child, an unlikely adult companion and a series of adventures that would eventually bring them closer. There was little in the trailer to suggest anything particularly radical. The film itself doesn't exactly overturn those expectations either, but it finds enough personality in its central pairing to make the formula work.

Fahadh Faasil plays Suri, an ambulance driver in Hyderabad who is also something of a conman, always looking for an opportunity to make a quick buck. His carefully managed life takes a turn when he meets Divya (Ssara Palekar), a young girl who mistakes him for a magician. She soon ends up travelling with Suri and her puppy Snoopy, and the circumstances that bring them together are best left for the film to reveal. What Suri eventually discovers is that Divya is no ordinary child. She has supernatural powers.

The film's most entertaining moments come from watching Suri grapple with Divya's powers. Fahadh plays his disbelief, irritation and eventual fascination with just the right amount of humour, particularly as Suri tries to understand what is happening around him. These reactions give the otherwise familiar fantasy premise some personality. Fahadh gets some of the film's best moments simply by allowing Suri to look completely out of his depth. It is a performance built less on big dramatic gestures than on reactions, and it works.

This also marks Fahadh's first Telugu film as a solo lead, and he carries the film comfortably. Suri is not an especially complicated character, but Fahadh gives him enough mischief and vulnerability to prevent him from becoming merely the wisecracking adult accompanying a child through a fantasy adventure. The relationship with Divya gradually becomes the emotional centre of the film, and the chemistry between Fahadh and Ssara is convincing enough to hold several of the quieter portions together.

Ssara, meanwhile, brings a restrained quality to Divya. The character could easily have been written as an overly precocious child with supernatural abilities, but the performance avoids pushing too hard. Divya often feels more observant than expressive, which makes her bond with Suri more intriguing.

Visually, the film takes a relatively grounded approach to its fantasy. The film gradually opens itself up into something resembling a fantasy musical, and Kala Bhairava's music does a lot of the work in giving these sequences their energy and mood.

That grounded treatment is also what keeps the first half engaging. 'Don't Trouble the Trouble' isn't a film that relentlessly throws jokes at the audience. There is humour, but much of its charm comes from watching Suri attempt to make sense of a situation that refuses to follow the rules he understands. The film is at its most enjoyable when it stays with this dynamic and allows the relationship between Suri and Divya to develop without rushing it.

The problem is that the second half isn't always as clear about what it wants to prioritise. Once the film introduces more goons and fight sequences, the story starts moving away from the relationship that made the earlier portions work. These action stretches often feel like narrative obligations rather than organic developments, adding length without adding much to the central story. The film could have been considerably tighter had some of these detours been trimmed.

There are also a few loose ends that the screenplay leaves hanging. A fantasy film does not necessarily have to explain every element of its world, but some of the film's unexplained details feel less like deliberate mystery and more like gaps in the writing. This becomes particularly noticeable towards the end, when the film asks the audience to invest heavily in its emotional payoff.

And the climax does work, at least on an emotional level. The scenes involving Fahadh and Ssara carry genuine weight and are likely to bring tears to some viewers. Yet there is something slightly uneven about the way the film reaches that point. The emotions are powerful in the moment, but the reasons behind them do not always feel completely consistent with what the film has established earlier. It is an effective climax, but not an entirely earned one.

There are echoes of films such as 'Sarvam Maya' in the way 'Don't Trouble the Trouble' uses fantasy as a means of exploring an emotional bond, although Yeleti's film is far less interested in building an elaborate mythology around its premise. Its appeal comes from its simplicity. It doesn't burden itself with an unnecessarily complicated plot, and that is perhaps why the stretches that work feel as easy-going as they do.