Though a very fragile subject for a movie, many renowned directors have created beautiful movies on 'friendship' that has enthralled the audiences. Over the years, the films on friendship has done quite well in Hindi and Tamil, which were equally lapped by Kerala audience. Going by these precedences is Vineeth Sreenivasan in his debut flick, who has woven a well made movie with sequences that much of generation can connect with in their life .Yes, that seems to be the catch line of 'Malarvadi Arts Club',- films with which people can identify always work. And for that, Vineeth has carefully done his homework and brought in five youngsters as his protagonists who all come from average families, in the movies.
His protagonists Prakash, (Nivin Pauly), Kuttu (Aju Varghese), Purushu (Bhagath Manuel), Santhosh (Shravan) and Praveen (Harikrishnan) come from a small village named Manassery in the north of Kerala. After completing their studies, they are now getting ready to face the ups and downs in their life with their unshakable bond of friendship. Pampered and mended by Kumarettan (Nedumudi Venu), who also runs a hotel in Manassery, the five known by the name 'Malarvadi Boys' after their club, consider him more like a father than their senior friend.
The first half of the movie is dedicated to all the adventurous life of the five some, taking up fights for the local cadre party and making trips to Mahi for tax-free boozing, while also making some serious digs on the societal life all around. And there comes all those events like harthals and reality shows. As Santhosh's family suddenly lands up into financial ruins following a court case, the friends convince him to try a chance in a realty show. The camaraderie between the friends suddenly goes out, as Santhosh is selected as the winner of a popular show and his parents intervene, playing fowl in their friendship
The movie has been explicitly inspired from many of the recent Bollywood flicks like 'Rock On' and `Dil Chahta Hai'. The highlight of the movie is that, each of the five has their own defined characters, maintained well all through the film. All the actors have put in very good performances, though Nivin Pauly, Bhagath Manuel and Aju Varghese were exceptional in many of the sequences and displays rare maturity for a first-timer. Like his father's script lines, Vineeth Srenivasan also comes up with delightful little nuggets of humour, sprinkled all through, with realistic and refreshingly witty dialogues.
The technical side is also in sync with the quality of the narratives with P Sukumar creating another good work behind camera. Renjan Abraham could have sync the shots in the music interludes, much better than what he had done now. The art director and costumers also have worked well to sustain the moods of the young generation flick. Though the BG scores of the movie worked well, some of the songs by Shaan Rehman could have been better. The title song and the marriage song seem to be pick from the all five, in the movie.
`Malarvadi Arts Club' also works because you can relate to the characters, you can relate to the moods, their egos, the highs and the lows. The movie is dedicated to all those thick friends, who have different outlook of life, but respect each other for what they are. Yes, `Malarvadi' remains so far as one of the strongly recommended films of the year, for its sincerity and for the portrayal of sensitive relationships.
