Pranaya Meenukalude Kadal Review: a disappointing experience

In terms of characterization, the hero of Pranaya Meenukalude Kadal is perhaps the worst in the recent past of the Malayalam cinema. The idea of romance inside that person is very dangerous. And Pranaya Meenukalude Kadal is a movie that wants to pitch him as a Romeo. With an extremely outdated script that explores characters very peripherally, Pranaya Meenukalude Kadal is a disappointing experience from director Kamal.

Lakshadweep is the setting of this movie. A team of men has come to the island to repair a ship owned by the Arakkal family of Lakshadweep. After reaching the island, Ajmal, a young man in the team falls in love with Jasmine, who is the granddaughter of the Arakkal Beevi. The class divide is a major issue the couple has to overcome and the movie Pranaya Meenukalude Kadal talks about that.

When senior people in the industry write and create new generation characters, there is a real lack of understanding. Here also we can see that bias. The older people are sentimental and deep while the hero and heroine are treated like kids. The way Kamal presents Ajmal as a careless young man is by making him howl and scream with his friends. After making him an absolute moron, the filmmakers plug this idea of an educated self-sufficient falling in love with this guy literally molested her underwater.

The story by director Kamal is easily predictable. He uses this psychopath angle to create excitement in the story. But the screenplay fails to create anything out of it. There is a lack of clarity in the screenplay on whether to focus on the love story of the couple or the loyalty of Hydru. The predictability of the story is very high and that makes it boring. Vishnu Panicker captures the visually lush Lakshadweep effectively. The cuts couldn’t create an engaging vibe. The music from Shaan Rahman was okay and the background score had all the Shaan Rahman elements. The visual effects of the movie were on the mediocre side.

Debutante Gabri Jose is struggling to portray a poorly written character. He is not an expressionless actor for sure. But the writing of his character is so bad that it will be difficult for us to say whether it is the writing or acting that went wrong. Riddhi Kumar who plays the lovely Jasmine was beautiful and expressive and the dubbing for her character done by Sneha Paliyeri was also pretty good. Vinayakan plays the role of Hydru and it is a character that is very much in his usual zone. Dileesh Pothan as Ansari was memorable. Rao, Sreedhanya, Saiju Kurup, Sudheesh etc are the other prominent names here.

The hero of this movie is introduced in a scene where he is hanging from a cliff and the fire force team rescues him. The reason why he was hanging there was his obsession for a selfie. He is literally stalking the heroine in the most vicious way possible. He was using all the Mohanlal dialogue references to justify his acts and that’s just bizarre.