Monsoon Mangoes is set on an appetizingly slow pace, with neither too much happening, nor being uneventful. That worked well for the first half of the movie, where D. P Pallickal (Fahadh Faasil) exhibits his undying passion for filmmaking, despite the many attempts by his family to discourage it. A family in the US is the blurred reality and the focal point is D. P Pallickal and his attempts at movie making.
Pallickal is on a steady job with an unsteady will to work at the toilet parts retail company. Sacked out of the blue, he is left with his script for making ‘Monsoon Mangoes’. His talks with a distributor (Alencier Ley Lopez) who arranges for Malayalam films to be played in a theatre nearby, and a chance encounter with a marginally-famous now-forgotten Bollywood star Prem Kumar (Vijay Raaz) compel him to start shooting his dream project with a crew that is not as committed as he wants them to be.
The comic situations roll out in perfect timing, and the characters, who look dressed for the stage all the time, seem comfortable playing their parts. The way each character carries one signature look throughout, even the colours and accessories they wear, is an interesting way of character-placement in the psyche of the viewer.
Fahadh is bang on when it comes to timing, and an actor like Vinay Forrt becomes the perfect ally. Fahadh handles the nuances of his character well—a pensive writer, socially awkward and yet a go-getter.
While Nandu times his comedy well, the presence of Josukutty and Sajini Sachariah is great value addition. Vijay Raaz, on his second tryst with the season (the first being Monsoon Wedding, where he made a memorable splash), stays on the mind.
The story starts to get a bit grim in the second half, where no one is quite able to put a finger on whether Pallickal is really talentless or if it’s just another instance of latent talent bursting forth at the right time.
Add to that the woes of a diminished star, who tries to salvage what little is left of his reputation, and the narrative shifts gear and gets on to ‘brooding’ lane, where everything suddenly turns dark and grey, after a peppy day.
Abi Varghese, of the immensely popular sitcom ‘Akkara Kazhchakal’, has rewinded the ‘life in America’ to a decade or two before, and has created frames that reflect the charm of it, with just a flash of colour pops and bling. The old shooting cameras, audio cassettes and candy coloured vehicles add to it.
The music is refreshing with Jakes Bejoy packing in five tunes, each a different genre; from a gospel number to even an ephemeral pop wag jiggle-jiggle number, he swings it nice and easy. Cinematography here is worth a thousand words; Lukasz Pruchnik has commendably sketched frames of wonder.
Monsoon Mangoes is seasonal; what seemed a good batch slightly varied once things rounded in on its core flavour, where it turned sour, nevertheless managing to keep it sweet to a large extent.
Rating: 3/5
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