'Padmasree Bharat Dr. Saroj Kumar' (Malayalam)
Director: Sajin Raaghavan
Cast: Sreenivasan, Mamta Mohandas, Vineeth Sreenivasan, Fahad Fazil
Rajappan Thengumoodu aka Saroj Kumar is one scriptwriter who believes that he is privileged to criticise anyone and everything in Malayalam cinema. Be it the popular stars whom Malayalis adore, crafty directors, young actors and the office-bearers of various film-related associations, everything came under the spoof scanner of Saroj Kumar. He even made a mockery of one of the best actors in Indian Cinema who made the entire Mollywood proud by achieving the honorary Lieutenant Colonel status.
But, Saroj Kumar cleverly left another section untouched - the script-writers.
He could have shown some courage at least to go for a detailed self-analysis and see what has happened to his creative writing skills for the last couple of years. That itself would have given him enough room for a spoof.
And sorry for using the name Saroj Kumar for the script-writer, instead of Sreenivasan. It is deliberately used as the script penned by Sreenivasan for his latest flick 'Padmasree Bharat Dr. Saroj Kumar' seems to be like one written by Saroj Kumar, the popular character from the flick 'Udayananu Taaram'. Buffoonery, mockery and selfboasting, the hallmarks of Saroj Kumar, are there in this script too, but it lacks that Sreeni touch.
Have you ever seen the name of the script-writer printed above that of the director on film posters? If your answer is ‘no’, just check the the posters of 'Padmasree Bharat Dr. Saroj Kumar' where you will find Sreenivasan’s name placed above debutant director Sajin Raghavan. So, it is naturally the responsibility of the script-writer to make the film an outstanding one. But unfortunately, the movie ends up to be a wet cracker.
'Padmasree Bharat Dr. Saroj Kumar' cannot be considered a sequel to “Udayananu Tharam”, though some characters like Saroj Kumar (Sreenivasan), Babykuttan (Mukesh), Pachalam Bhasi (Jagathy) and Salim Kumar (Rafeeq) are borrowed from the latter.
And if you expect this movie to be a perfect entertainer like 'Udayananu Taaram', then you will definitely be disappointed as it does not have the quality of the 2005 flick, which was strongly backed by the top-notch direction of Roshan Andrews and a fine performance by Mohanlal.
In 'Udayananu Taaram', scriptwriter Sreenivasan succeeded in creating some hilarious situations with his sense of humour, but here he failed miserably. The press conference scene, Kavalam innerwear advertisement, the scenes at military training camp, the one in which Saroj Kumar fires gun shots at Pachalam Bhasi and scenes of Saroj with his wife Neelima (Mamta) are all examples of Sreenivasan degrading himself to the level of Saroj Kumar.
For Sreenivasan, this is not a new thing. After penning a crapper like 'Bharagava Charitham Moonam Khandam', Sreeni came back strongly with 'Kadha Parayumbol'. So, let us hope that the writer will deliver us something better next time.