Suggested Topics :
'Painkili' Movie Review: A Wildly Original, Mildly Frustrating Comedy
If you’re willing to let go of your defences, 'Painkili' becomes a mausoleum of madness, a citadel of cringe that gets you to laugh for the kind of jokes you’ve never seen or heard of before.
Director: Sreejith Babu
Writer: Jithu Madhavan
Cast: Sajin Gopu, Anaswara Rajan, Lijo Jose Pellissery, Roshan Shanavas, Chandhu Salimkumar
Language: Malayalam
In Sreejith Babu’s debut Painkili, cringe isn’t the after-effect as much as it is the aesthetic the film aspires for. It is self-aware and loud and made by a director with such an original style that he hasn’t yet found ways to bring it under control. How else would you describe some of the wild ideas that are dime a dozen?
Also Read | 'Ponman' Movie Review: A Stunning Basil Joseph Shines In This Stressful, High-Stakes Drama
Take the example of a character named Jaffer, one of the many “gundas” in the film. Not only does Jaffer introduce himself each time he runs into a friend, but he goes on to call everyone around him Jaffer too. It doesn’t make any sense and oftentimes ideas like these are so strange that we’re unsure if we’re expected to laugh or wince. But in the odd instance one of these wild swings begin to make sense, it’s next to impossible to stop laughing.
Another favourite is the sub-plot that takes up most of the film’s first half. It’s got something to do with the film’s protagonist Suku (Sajin Gopu) having to travel to Coimbatore to buy a new printer for his sticker company. But things go so wildly wrong for Suku and he not only ends up killing someone, but also ends up in a mental asylum. The mood the film is chasing isn’t that of a dark comedy nor are we expected to take any of this seriously. But when Suku returns home after the world finds out about his stint at the asylum, we’re suddenly hit with the realisation that we’re witnessing the craziest adaptation of Lohithadas’ Thaniyavarthanam (1987). The jokes just write themselves after this point.
Read more | 'Chhaava' Movie Review: A Roaring Tribute to Bad Film-making
What amuses you about this conceit is just how uniformly all the actors have understood the assignment. So, when Sheeba Baby (Ananswara Rajan) is advised to get married to a gunda, just so she can get away from her strict father who is also a gunda, she goes straight to a market to find one. And who’s playing this gunda? Riyaz Khan in one of his funniest avatars yet.
None of this is necessarily funny, at least not until one succumbs to its silliness. But even when you think the film has gone too far, you still know that you’re witnessing the work of someone who simply looks at the world differently. And this is mostly true because Painkili is not a film that even cares for its plot. For instance, somewhere along the way we’re told that Sheeba is a minor; narratively, it doesn’t add up at all. But when her 18th birthday becomes the setting for a hilarious proposal sequence, you must understand that the film has only one point to make—to make people laugh at any cost.
Yet the film, written by Jithu Madhavan, isn’t devoid of characters with soul. Both Suku and Sheeba are looking to get married... but not for love. What they want from marriage in their own way is some form of freedom. For Sheeba, this freedom means that she can do whatever she wants; as for Suku, he wants the freedom from being judged.
Read More | From 'Main Hoon Na' to 'Dil Chahta Hai': 10 Memorable Bollywood Meet-Cutes From the Last 25 Years
Sajin Gopu is unbelievable as Suku. In a tense sequence, where he’s caught hiding a woman at home, he begins to act as though he was practising his mono-acting skills. But his OTT performance in this sequence is so explosive that Rangannan himself from Aavesham would be proud to have him on his team.
But as with any idea that’s truly new, you need a little bit of time to fully buy into what the film wants to do. We are half a decade into the TikTok-Reels era, and by now, we even have a generation of cringe creators we’ve all become fans of. What if we take all those cringe creators and write a movie about their everyday life, that too without any sense of irony? That’s perhaps how one can describe the aesthetic of Painkili. It’s obviously some sort of an acquired taste, just as how a stoner comedy isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. But if you’re willing to let go of your defences, Painkili becomes a mausoleum of madness, a citadel of cringe that gets you to laugh for the kind of jokes you’ve never seen or heard of before.