Malayalee
From
India
is
trapped
within
its
self-serving
corniness
and
refuses
to
break
free
in
the
process,
observes
Arjun
Menon.
Halfway
through
the
runtime
of
Dijo
Jose
Anthony’s
Malayalee
From
India,
you
imagine
yourself
watching
a
cautionary
tale
of
a
right-wing
hero,
who
is
forced
to
reckon
with
his
carelessly
constructed
ideological
bent.
However,
the
film,
like
the
writer-director
duo’s
previous
films
like
Queen
(2018)
and
Jana
Gana
Mana
(2022),
starts
off
being
one
thing
and
morphs
into
something
more
unexpected
and
stifles
under
its
own
good-intentioned
messaging.
Malayalee
From
India
undercuts
the
weighty
seriousness
of
its
subject
matter
with
a
lighter
tone
and
you
follow
a
jobless,
clumsy
troublemaker
Aalparambil
Gopi
(Nivin
Pauly)
who
still
feeds
off
his
ageing
mother
and
working
sister.
You
get
a
sense
of
what
the
film
is
trying
to
say
by
following
the
pitifully
unaware
existence
of
a
hero,
who
attaches
himself
to
the
ruling
party,
seeing
how
things
have
been
turned
out
in
his
immediate
surroundings
and
he
prides
himself
on
being
a
‘Hindu
for
no
apparent
reason’
but
that
he
has
never
been
faced
with
the
possibility
of
the
idea
of
pluralism
in
his
lazy
existence.
I
was
truly
excited
at
the
prospect
of
a
comedy
tackling
some
heady
issues,
framed
from
the
viewpoint
of
a
right-wing
figure,
driven
by
a
lack
of
understanding
of
the
political
state
of
affairs
venomously
seeping
into
his
surroundings
which
the
film
does
with
varying
degrees
of
effectiveness.
Aalparambil
Gopi
and
his
similarly
jobless
confidant
Malgosh
(Dhyan
Sreenivasan)
are
faced
with
a
problem
in
their
village
when
they
get
embroiled
in
a
sensitive,
communal
issue
that
changes
the
course
of
their
existence.
Gopy
is
derivative
of
the
many
loafer
stereotypes
played
by
Nivin
Pauly
in
the
past
and
the
star
seems
perfectly
at
home
playing
the
goofy
hero
caught
between
serious
problems.
Nivin
gets
to
delve
into
the
comedic
beats
of
Gopi’s
mundane
existence
and
you
get
a
glimpse
of
his
performances
from
films
like
Oru
Vadakkan
Selfie
(2015),
where
he
balances
a
foolhardy
earnestness
while
playing
a
character
caught
in
issues
that
are
slightly
above
his
head
and
beyond
his
temperament.
Dhyan
Sreenivasan
is
functional
as
the
hero’s
sidekick,
who
drives
the
inciting
incident
of
the
screenplay
and
then
is
relegated
to
the
sides.
Anaswara
Rajan
plays
the
underdeveloped
female
lead,
who
is
fated
to
be
Gopi’s
unattainable
romantic
ideal,
and
is
rushed
off
to
the
sides
once
the
film
kicks
into
story
mode.
In
the
second
half,
we
get
the
second
best-written
character
in
the
form
of
Jalal
Bin
Omar
Al
Rashid
aka
Sahib
(Deepak
Jethi),
who
elevates
the
stakes
of
the
drama
and
his
relationship
with
Gopy
and
slowly
picks
up
the
film’s
momentum,
even
though
it
comes
a
bit
too
late
to
turns
things
around
from
the
film’s
meandering
lecture
like
design.
Manju
Pillai
too
gets
to
revel
in
a
shaggy
conceived
‘mother’
role.
Dijo
Jose
Anthony
is
committed
to
each
sentiment
expressed
in
Malayalee
From
India
and
you
can
see
Sharis
Mohammed,
the
screenwriter,
furiously
ticking
off
the
checklist
of
all
liberal
talk
points
when
dealing
with
religious
fundamentalism
and
communal
politics.
Malayalee
From
India
cannot
be
more
timely
as
a
film
by
nature
of
its
subject
alone.
You
get
a
peddler
of
right-wing
ideology,
forced
to
work
in
the
Middle
East
alongside
a
Pakistani
captor,
as
loglines
go,
you
can
rarely
miss
that
sort
of
a
coming-of-age
arc
for
the
hero
in
your
story.
However,
excessive
preaching
and
the
sincere
yet
hitting-you-over-the-head
construction
of
the
scenes
hold
back
the
film
from
its
potential.
Sudeep
Elamon
glides
through
the
film
capturing
the
meandering
tone
with
a
consistent
visual
style
and
Jakes
Bejoy
underlines
the
thematic
and
conceptual
ideas
of
the
film
with
an
overbearing
but
rousing
score.
Malayalee
From
India
cannot
be
faulted
for
earnestness.
In
this
day
and
age,
where
propaganda
and
social
media
misinformation
are
an
unavoidable
fixture
of
all
our
lives,
here
we
have
a
film
that
satirises
the
hate-spreading
ideals
of
fascistic
units
that
have
slowly
crept
their
way
into
our
feeds
and
daily
lives.
In
the
polarised
world
of
hate
politics
and
simplified
communal
bigotry,
I
am
rooting
for
these
occasional
films
that
have
their
foot
rightly
fixed
in
the
corner
of
truth
and
moral
high
ground.
But
the
idea,
more
than
the
execution,
stands
tall
in
this
version
of
well-intentioned
but
bloated
civics
lessons.
Like
the
CGI-lend
rat
shown
to
symbolise
Gopi’s
character
beats
in
the
film,
Malayalee
From
India
is
trapped
within
its
self-serving
corniness
and
refuses
to
break
free
in
the
process.
Malayalee
From
India
streams
on
SonyLIV.
Malayalee
From
India
Review
Rediff
Rating:
