Achayans review; a sloppy attempt for a comedy drama

This is the fifth solo film of Sethu as a writer and it seems like the writer has somewhat repeated his last film Cousins in a different mould. Achayans directed by Kannan Thamarakkulam comes with the tagline of being a celebration and to be honest it is torture rather than celebration. With a clueless screenplay trying to make it funny and thrilling in bizarre ways, Achayans will test your metal.

Tony is this pampered child of his parents and is an irresponsible guy. He is in love with a girl within the family and the marriage wasn’t happening because of the irresponsible nature of Tony. So the family decides to send Tony and his gang of cousins and friend to a retreat center. What happens in that journey and how that eventually influences their lives is what Achayans all about.

The sloppiness in the writing is the biggest negative here. The movie is wasting a lot of its time in the first half to fake the whole celebration mode. We are getting to see a lot things in the frst half including a cameo from PC George, all of which make no sense by the time the movie enters its main theme. Post interval when the movie seems to have an aim, Kannan Thamarakkulam’s mediocre making just makes it a painful experience.

The significance of Jayaram’s character is kind of questionable when you look at the final structure of the story. He is somewhat repeating his usual performance with a pinch of Sathya. Unni Mukundan plays the role of an alcoholic and when the character becomes emotional in the last quarter, his performance was very poor. Adil, Sanju and Sshivada has very little to do here. Amala Paul’s performance looked very lame partially because of the amateurish writing. A great actor like Prakash Raj got wasted in that police role. Anu Sithara was okay in her role. Siddique once again proves that even with one or two scenes he can be the best performer in an entire film.

Kannan Thamarakkulam repeats his outdated making style. The way he has handled Achayans is so dull that the experience on the whole will give you a headache. There is no real creative construction of scenes happening here from a director. Like I already said, the first half is a fusion of pointless celebrations and rotten jokes. You sort of feel that the movie is becoming more serious in the second half, but sadly the exaggerated build up and technically flawed making disappoints you in this area as well. The cinematography is lackluster and the edits go haywire. BGM is excessive and the music was disappointing.

The fans of the mediocre daily soaps we see in TV these days may find Achayans as a watchable movie. For the rest of you this might function as an orientation class to watch those TV serials.