It traces the new adventure of Raja (Mammootty), who looks younger than ever. Both of them have their share of cringe-worthy scenes too, but occasionally, they do remind us of the kind of film Pokkiri Raja could have been! As such, this is a dreary affair, a painful one at that.Madhura Raja is the sequel to Malayalam superstar Mammootty’s 2010 lowbrow comedy, Pokkiri Raja. While Yogi Babu as Mojo literally walks away with all the swag, Muniskanth steals the thunder right under the nose of Sibiraj. Two actors, whose characters are the best-written amidst all the mediocrity, keep us watching. And at these moments, even the mediocre jokes pass off as good ones.
Whenever the film comes alive, which is way too rarely, the nonsense catches on infectiously. The plot, which is about Jiiva yawning his way to success, could have made for a super-crazy comedy if at all the scenes were tastefully sketched, the humour was skilfully tapped, the characters were effectively outlined and the songs were innovatively staged. Come on… What to make of a film that leaves you exactly where it started at the interval, with more than an hour of screen time devoted to two lousy songs, a dozen rhyming jokes and the running gag on Hansika’s drinking habits! Hansika falls in love, because…No wait, there is no spoiler here. Jiiva initially misunderstands her nature of work ( Thanni Adikraa), and on realizing his mistake, helps her out. Hansika’s character is much clearer though! She, as a part of a social campaign, sprays water from a tank on people relieving themselves in the open. And that’s certainly not in a curious way. Instead what you get here are inane jokes and ‘done-to-death’ caricatures in the form of Manobala playing the team lead (you get the picture, right?), Sibiraj playing the trying-too-hard-to-be-swag baddie, and Hansika Motwani playing a reloaded version of the Kollywood asylum heroine.Īnd Jiiva? Till the half way point (and on second thoughts, even till the end), we are unsure of what he is playing. The refreshing writing and the cliché twists, which guaranteed the fun and made us overlook the loopholes in the director’s previous film, are nowhere to be seen in Pokkiri Raja. In fact, it’s boring almost for the entirety. Just that, this time around, the humour and therefore, the film as a whole, doesn’t work. So his latest fantasy film, in essence, is an attempt at a nutty comedy everything else being an excuse for unleashing the loony jokes. Ramprakash Rayappa, who got our attention with the refreshing comedy-masquerading-as-a-thriller ( Tamizhukku Enn Ondrai Azhuthavum), does the same in P okkiri Raja, by swapping ‘thriller’ with ‘fantasy’ as the pretense genre. A few more choose to play to their strengths once again, under a clever facade of genre-change. And knowing this, most debutante makers switch genres for their second film, probably anticipating the inevitable comparisons with their first celebrated outing. It’s, for many reasons, a test of their consistency – a real opportunity to squash the ‘one-film-wonder’ tag. The second movie is always a tricky thing for young film-makers more so for directors who have, for some reason, come under the radar in their debut.
Ramprakash Rayappa disappoints big time with ‘Pokkiri Raja’, a lazy fantasy-comedy that keeps testing your patience….
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