A hilarious take on today’s youth

Film: Oru Vadakkan Selfie

Director: G. Prajith

Cast: Nivin Pauly, Aju Varghese, Manjima, Neeraj Madhav

In the late 1980s and ’90s, the aimless youth in our movies used to hang out outside colleges, followed around girls, had big dreams, chased them, fell inadvertently into traps, only to be redeemed in the end. Cut to 2015, the aimless youth in our movies studies engineering (mostly against their wishes), follows around girls and makes short films. Nothing has changed, and everything has changed.

G. Prajith in his debut Oru Vadakkan Selfie , scripted by Vineeth Sreenivasan, brings on screen a set of situations which the present-day youth can easily identify with. Umesh (Nivin Pauly) is the typical struggler engineering student, who has amassed 42 ‘supplis’ by the final year. Having no particular interest in anything and with his parents pressuring him to ‘do something,’ he tries his hand at earning some fame and money. Supporting him in every move are his closest buddies, shop attendant Shaji (Aju Varghese) and bus driver Thankaprasad (Neeraj Madhav). Umesh’s life takes a turn when Daisy (Manjima) arrives as his neighbour, with the aspiring film-maker getting caught in a bizarre real-life script. In the initial parts, which are a breeze with some rip-roaring funny sequences, one thinks that the film is going to be an ‘inward’ look by the current crop in the industry. Umesh sets out to make a short film, knowing zilch about the process, ‘refers’ Korean film DVDs and tries to make short films inspired from his favourite film-makers. But that film-maker track abruptly gets over, when there was still a lot of scope for expansion. The film takes off on a completely different tangent in the second half, though still managing to keep the lighter spirit alive.

In one of sequences, the prodigal son Umesh promptly makes a call to his strict father when he hears a young boy narrate his love for his father. Typically, this would have set off some unbearable melodrama. But this scene ends with the audience roaring with laughter. Earlier in the film, in his attempts to go ‘viral’ online and make his name, Umesh tries a novel campaign against hartal, only to have it backfire hilariously.

Towards the end though the plot gets a little too complicated, with a host of new characters and situations. The unnecessary compulsion to deliver a social message too takes over Vineeth. Despite the climax without a sense of closure, Oru Vadakkan Selfie is an entertaining watch.

S.R. Praveen