De Ingottu Nokkiye

Language : Malayalam
Director : Balachandra Menon
Producer : A.V. Anoop
Camera : Jibu Jacob
Story : Balachandra Menon
Screenplay : Balachandra Menon
Dialogue : Balachandra Menon
Lyrics : Gireesh Puthencherry, Kaithapram
Music : M. Jayachandran
Distribution : Vishakha Release
Release : 2008 April 17
Cast : Jagathy, Jayasurya, Sara, Janardhanan, Bharath Gopi, Kalpana, Thilakan, Idavela Babu, Mala Aravindan, Nedumudi Venu, Salim Kumar, Indrans, Kochupreman, Rajan.P.Dev, Kollam Thulasi, Balachandra Menon, Lena, M.R. Gopakumar, Sukumari, Kaviyoor Ponnamma.

It so happens on rare occasions that midway through a film, you abruptly realize that things have gone bonkers to such an extent, that you are laughing out aloud at the most sentimental of sequences and maintaining a grimace in the purportedly side-splitting ones. De Ingottu Nokkiye remains quite true to a fraction of its celebrated tagline - it's indeed an idiotic film as it claims, but sans any remote sense of intelligence and perhaps with intentions that went for a walk down the crazy lane for all I care.

Vettikkadu Shivan (Jayasurya) has nothing better to do in life, than woo his sweetheart Parvathi (Sarah) and contest for the State Assembly Elections opposite his rogue uncle, Vettikkadu Sadashivan (Jagathy Sreekumar), all set to become the Chief Minister for another five years. In a desperate bid, he kidnaps his uncle and brings in his moronic twin brother Vettikkadu Sambashivan, a banana vendor, as his stand-in, who develops a special liking towards handing out the fruit to his supporters.

You need to hand it out to me for attempting to craft a story here. I would rather be frank, and confess that I was busy making notes all the while, frantically making an effort to connect the disjointed bits that lay all around. At the end of it all, here I was, with a messy scrap full of crisscrosses that made no sense whatsoever and looking suspiciously like an abandoned cobweb.

It doesn't take long before you realize the implication of the film's slightly bizarre title. Menon has quite a lot to tell, and he wants your attention right here. And hence De Ingottu Nokkiye. You look, and see a film that's stranded half way between a fictional documentary and a factual feature film. Perhaps Menon would have had a Mockumentary in mind, but the essentials are sadly missing. He starts off with a visual commentary, and drags us into a story that we fail to make head or tail of, and keeps on pitching in the social critique bits.

Hence it's the modus operandi that goes awry here, with the spectators rendered literally speechless out of the mayhem. The spiky barbs aimed at all those vices and follies fall short of their targets and the humor often leaves a real awful taste in your mouth. Blown up with a million references and asides, much of the film feels like a floppily connected series of bad jokes. As for the performances and the music... well, forget it.

There's a scene halfway through the film when the Chief Minister reveals his fondness for anything that has his beloved's name on it, be it Agarbathis or Pan Masalas. It's this sort of astonishing ineptitude at sardonic humor that sinks this film. And it almost seems like several separate screenplays were bluntly merged together to form one hardly coherent piece of work.

As much as I hate to say it, De Ingottu Nokkiye is a film that has its attention concurrently on quite a lot of things. And as such, it's way out of focus, shaky and quite unbalanced and would remain a socio-political satire with lots of bark and little bite.

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