Towards the end of Pullikkaran Stara is placed a sequence that bears testimony to how clueless the scriptwriter was, and probably how helpless he felt, by the time he reached that point.
Rajakumaran (Mammootty), the teaching instructor is coming back from a youth festival with a bunch of school children. The bus in which they are travelling loses control and perches at the edge of a deep gorge. A child, who gets thrown out of the window, dangles from a tree branch. Rajakumaran, as is expected of him, goes into hero-mode to risk his life and save the child.
When that sequence comes out of the blue, with no seeming consequence to the happenings after that, you feel that they are making one last desperate attempt to make the audience invest some emotion in the characters. For, till that point, all that one feels would be a kind of indifference, or even revulsion, at their antics.
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Rajakumaran is introduced as a well-meaning, intelligent man, who has been mistaken to be a pervert, because he has a penchant for being at the wrong place at the wrong time. Even at a ripe age, despite having a way with words, he is unable to strike a relationship with women. At the same time, it’s constantly hinted that all the women in town, including the ones half his age, are interested in him.
Two other men, his old school friend Kuryachen (Dileesh Pothen) and an experienced pervert Omanakshan Pillai (Innocent) decide to help him find a girl. Joining them in the mission is Manjima (Deepti Sathi), who just casually decides to live with Rajakumaran and the gang at their apartment, after meeting him in a train. With the man’s school sweetheart Manjari (Asha Sarath) being in the same school, their job is easy.
At those times when Rajakumaran is free from all this drama, he gives free advice to teachers. These sessions with the teachers, in which he tells them those things we get as whatsapp forwards, are also aimed only at making a show of his ‘intelligence.’
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In between, there are other amazing sequences, like the one where he magically makes Manjima forget her worries, by making her purchase a gift and offer it to random people on the street, who are all scared by it. If all this was not enough, you have pointless songs thrown at you at regular intervals. The film doesn’t manage to get anything right, even by accident.
The title of the film says ‘Yes, He is a star’. But its content and treatment seems to be aimed at disproving that title. The star should save himself from such duds.
S.R. Praveen