Varalaru Mukkiyam Review - A S*X Comedy that is Vulgar and Avoidable
The opening scene of Aralaaru Mukkiyam takes place in 2050, but before we can get our hopes up, the sequence itself completely deflates any expectations we may have had for the movie. What we witness is a two and a half hour long sexist, childish, lacklustre, and humourless disaster that lacks even narrative tension.
The main character of the movie is karthik (Jiiva), who frequently claims to be a YouTuber but does little else but pursue Yamuna (Kashmira Pardeshi), the "Mallu girl" who recently moved into his neighbourhood. Though for the most part, the movie basically meanders from one worthless scene to the next, the plot, if we could call it that, is about whether he ultimately gets to marry her. VTV Ganesh's persona, a minister who is Karthik's friend and love adviser, appears somewhere in all of this.
In order to create this movie, director Santhosh Rajan appears to have drawn inspiration from adult comedies by santhosh p Jayakumar. Sadly, it simply makes this film feel more out-of-date because even the latter has progressed past such crude attempts. The juvenile ideas and the unimaginative writing appear to be competing to see who can use the most outdated language.
Karthik's friend asks him in one scene whether he isn't beating up yamuna the same way he did the men pursuing his sister. "Avangala annoy panra maadhiri panna koodathu" is his justification before acting similarly. Even worse, he accuses her of torturing and tempting him! Even visual signals contribute to the casual sexism. When yamuna and karthik are discussing guns in a scene, the camera flies down to her bosom and then much lower. Ironically, she also gives in and begins romancing him.
There are scarcely any good points. The climactic section has a bit of crazy energy, but even this just looks thrilling conceptually. Jiiva gives it his all, yet it merely appears like a wasted effort. He keeps putting his all into scripts that he shouldn't have chosen in the first place, much like someone who fervently keeps polishing a piece of rock without realising that it is not a diamond.