Expectations a tad too high

Film: Mili

Cast: Amala Paul, Nivin Pauly

Director: Rajesh Pillai

‘You can win,’ ‘Seven habits of highly effective people,’ ‘How to win friends and influence people’ – self-help books, a favourite among the pirates for their massive popularity, come under a variety of names, but all essentially saying the same thing. Same goes with the motivational, coming-of-age films.

Still we flock to them, expecting the makers to spring a surprise. For Mili , the expectations were double as Rajesh Pillai’s previous effort Traffic became kind of a trendsetter in the industry. The final product through belies all that, presenting a straight-forward story of an introvert girl becoming an achiever, failing to inspire the audience at any point.

Mili (Amala Paul) finds herself a misfit in every social situation. At school, the teacher routinely picks on her, as a grown-up she is a trouble to her hostel mates and at the nursery where she works, the parents have a problem with her.

At the lowest ebb of her life, she meets Naveen (Nivin Pauly), supposedly a life coach who can gauge others’ problems by some clairvoyance, who will guide her to success.

Mahesh Narayanan’s script seems a wee bit confused on the real character of Mili, so much so that one wonders what exactly her problem is. In the hostel scenes, she comes across more as an extroverted troublemaker, in opposition to her introvert self. In another sequence where she signs as witness for a runaway couple’s marriage, she doesn’t look at all lacking in confidence. But, when she faces a series of ordinary crises, the characters around her react as if doom is nigh.

The film never really takes off from a damp start, even towards the latter half, when there is ample scope for it. The frequent switching to flashback mode pulls back the proceedings further.

The concept of background music is given new meanings by Gopi Sunder, as hardly any scene passes without music.

Amala Paul does justice to the character while Nivin does not have much scope to perform and is subdued for most parts. Even as Mili, the character, expectedly lives up to her father’s expectations, Mili, the film, fails to live up to the audience’s.

S.R. Praveen