A friend’s comment on my post –Top Malayalam Movies of 2012 prompted me to write this article. Choosing the worst from a pile of bad movies is no easy task but movies below might find place in anybody’s list for the worst films of 2012.
1) Casanova – The bigger the expectations, the bigger the debacle when the movie turns out to be bad and that’s what happened with Casanova. The movie which was promoted as the costliest movie ever made in Malayalam fell flat from the first day itself when the negative reviews spread. What in this world was Mohanlal thinking when he agreed for an introduction scene where a large number of girls wait outside the airport for “the hottest guy in Europe “and when Mohanlal makes his entry , you don’t see the 3 persons behind him because he covers them all ! Well we expected a lot from the duo – Bobby -Sanjay after the superb Traffic. Fortunately the movie did make an impact on Mohanlal and the rest of his movies in 2012 were all decent.
2) King and Commissioner – When you have big stars in your movie , you gain the maximum by pitting them against each other. That’s the main reason Twenty-20 worked. There is no fun at all when you slice the dialogues in exact halves and give them to your superstars .That’s the problem with King and Commissioner. Mr. Shaji Kailas and Mr. Ranji Panicker how many times have we seen the same sequences in your own movies where the hero mouths long dialogues in a minister’s room with his superior officer, the hero makes entry when a fellow officer harasses some poor family and then the hero narrates the history of some politician in detail.Add to all that the climax where Mammootty and Suresh Gopi speaks in Malayalam for some 15 minutes to a Pakistani guy who dont have a clue what he is hearing( the people who watched it in DVD might not have made it till here) was little too much !
3) Mr.Marumakan – Dileep’s My Boss was a nice clean entertainer but his other 2 movies in 2012 – Mayamohini and Mr.Marumakan were just aimed at being Money grossers and the latter was crasser among the two. A story that has no logic at all , weird comedy dialogues and some over the top performances tested our patience throughout. There is a big difference between Jagathy and Baburaj and that was evident when Baburaj played the character that was originally written with Jagathy in mind which he couldn’t act after his accident. What constantly irritated me was how easily Dileep reaches Kushboo’s drawing room every time in spite of her security guards and how everyone in that house simply stood without taking any action to whatever rubbish he said. Sanusha is definitely not ready to play heroine to big stars.
4) Simhasanam – Prithviraj is the most prominent young actor we have today. What he should be doing is more movies like Ayalum Njanum Thammil and Molly Aunty Rocks. If he want to do action movies, let him do movies like Puthiyamugam ( or to an extent even ‘Hero’ is fine). But what he should never do is a Simhasanam which is just a mish-mash of old Mammooty and Mohanlal movies where they play these feudal lords whom the villagers worship and who would do anything for their native. There are people who have watched Araam thampuran numerous times that one wonder what makes Shaji Kailas pick the same subplot involving two heroines and put it directly again in this movie. One can only feel sorry for poor Prithviraj who is now forced to do one more movie with Shaji Kailas in compensation to the advance he received for Raghupathi Raghava Rajaram . No actor should have this fate !
5) Cobra – When you are going through a bad phase, everything you do backfire and Cobra was yet another disaster for Mammootty. The actor who had refined his comic timing in recent years was let down by a really bad script. He was seen playing an eligible bachelor searching for his soul-mate yet again and giving him company this time was movie’s director – Lal who did a terrible job both in front and back of the camera. The manner in which they called each other ‘Brothere’ every other second could give you serious headaches. Lal should go back to making more sequels to ‘In Harihar Nagar’ than trying anything new.
P.S : I couldn’t include movies like Puthiya Theerangal , Josettante Hero , Shikari because I did not watch them ( or rather did not have the courage to watch them after hearing the negative reviews). Mayamohini, Thappana, Asuravithu and Bachelor Party are some other movies that I did not include to restrict the list from growing too big !
