In another surprising rendition, hit maker Shafi has faltered for the first time in the recent years trying to create a tasty `Lolipop'. The movie which comes as a shocker for his fans, have colorful songs, great young cast, good visuals and hilarious moments-But, yet again fails to hook the audience due to its packaging and presentation and end up as another average fare.
The movie is indeed racy, in fact too racy and twisty in the later half to the extent that it may even leave us uninterested. The entire proceedings - clearly erratic and inconsistent, makes us immersed in a mess of mismatched events.
The movie is all about Franco, who runs an automobile workshop at Fort Kochi, continuously finding solace in bashing up his assistants for silly reasons. Franco shares a special bonding with his only sister Jennifer, (Roma) who has lost their parents at very younger stages of their life .And to avoid being left lonely at any further stage of their life; they have even decided to find their match in life, only after mutual approval.
Franco gets attracted to RoseBella (bhavana) who happens to be a sworn enemy of Jennifer and fears that since he couldn't keep his word with his sister, she may object to his relationship. In the meantime Dr Aby, (uncheck Boban) a practicing psychiatrist bumps into Jennifer and she asks his brother, with all her sincerity, to meet Aby to know whether he likes him to be her partner in life. But on seeing Aby, Franco is left with a difficult situation as Aby holds the key too many mysteries of their past life that he seldom wants to reveal to Jennifer.
Into this mayhem of events arrives Francis(Jayasuriya), a former expert in pick pocketing and fraudulent ways, who is now forced to reform himself on the advice of Father kuriakose(Salimkumar).Francis has his share of atrocious intentions to remain as an assistant to Franco, the major one being that he has already fallen madly for Jennifer. The movie follows these love triangles, and treachery and handles relationships in hackneyed fashions.
The highlight of the movie is that the jokes by Suraj venjaramodu and Salimkumar though corny, makes you break into a laugh at times. Indeed they are the very few whom you love to take a center stage in this movie, with every others becoming inconsequential with made up characterizations. The problem is that the writer Benny P Nayarambalam, seems to have messed things up, with a number of questions remaining unanswered even after the show has concluded. Besides, the second hour is an exercise in dullness, with predictable plot lines and twists after twists which gets unbearable after a point. The handling of the climax by the director is also a major disappointment.
In the acting front Roma and Jayasuriya repeats the roles that they had been to lately, in many films. Prithviraj as Franco has nothing more to do than to be in the centre of activity. Havana and Kunchakko Boban is wasted in insipid roles while Bhavana's dubbing is more than a suffering, at times.
The first-time producers in Benny and Shafi have left no stone unturned to give the film an upscale looks, even with songs shots at foreign locales. But the real downer in `Lolipop' other than the scripts is the music department by Alex Paul, None of the songs in the movie has that usual appeal of Shafi hits. The lyrics are also too lame to give us a feeling for humming along. More pathetic is the background scoring of the flick which fails to engage us. In the later half, events and sequences accumulate in such a pace that there is no space left for an engaging music bit.
Overall 'Lolipop' is an ordinary fare, the only highlight being the good humour, at places.
