For Christ’s Sake

No other birthday has created so much buzz and hype in the film worlds throughout the globe than Jesus Christ’s. Christmas is in fact a new year for film industries world wide. The energetic heroes of Christmas releases nowadays clearly overshadow that old man with a white beard. Poor old Santa. In Kerala too, four films are vying with each other to make hay while Christmas stars shine in the façade of middle class homes: Baba Kalyani, Smart City, Note Book, and Palunku. Baba Kalyani (fondly called ‘Kalyani’ by the quick-witted fans) is a Chiranjeevi or a Vijayakanth movie. A small difference though. Only that Mohanlal is acting the role that by logic should have gone to Chiranjeevi or Vijayakanth. Smart City is Suresh Gopi’s another attempt to emulate Saurav Ganguly. Like Saurav Ganguly, Suresh Gopi had also been finding it difficult to impress the viewers. He scored a movie equivalent of a half century through Bharath Chandran IPS. He is in need of bigger scores if he wants to keep buying expensive ice creams for the four kids he happened to have. (No personal affront here. He in fact had come on TV a day before the release of Bharath Chandran IPS and pleaded with audience to watch the movie so that he could do, what else keep buying expensive ice creams for his children.) Note Book is a much awaited movie for two reasons. It is the second film of Roshan Andrews who became a savior of sorts for mainstream cinema after the stupendous success of Udayananu Thaaram. Also it is the first movie that deals with love and life in, well, educational institutions after the runaway hit of the year, Classmates. Palunku is a class movie. That is what everybody I met told me when we talked about it. Nobody elaborated what is meant by a ‘class movie’.

I am no industry expert or insider to know about the collection of each of these movies and other undercurrents. But this is what I gathered from people who have seen the movies: Kalyani is OK. Die-hard Mohanlal fans will like it. Notebook is Kaththi. (Kaththi means knife. But these days it is a slang used for describing something that is awfully bad.) Palunku is, well, a class movie. And for Smart City, I am sorry. Nobody I know has seen the film. This information may be quite wrong as I gathered this from friends who, like me, do not know much about the market dynamics of film industry. So any fans who felt disappointed by the opinion, please don’t feel bad. Cheer up folks. It is Christmas time.