Police Maman Malayalam Movie
'Police Maaman' has Baburaj playing Shankunni, a diffident police officer who is entrusted with a case of homicide. As Shankunni adopts a unique modus operandi to nab the real culprits, the audience gets all set to flee for their lives.
This isn't the first time that we see a cop with similar features, but the characterization is pretty much stuck where we saw it first - Sreenivasan enacting the coward police officer in 'Aanavaal Mothiram' a few decades back.
I certainly have no intentions to compare Shankunni with the role played by Sreenivasan, since the former is infinitesimally inferior in composition, and has none of the depth or intensity that made the latter character identifiable.
It's almost impossible to sit through the gratuitous antics of Shankunni and co., and before long you arrive at the conclusion that some films on the pretext of entertainment stuff you with mindless stuff that simply make you want to puke.
'Police Maaman' is scertainly not a film that warrants any intricate dissection, and has no further purpose to serve other than minimal amusement. Whether it succeeds in its very modest endeavor is the big question, and the answer could be a very emphatic 'No'.
There are any number of scenes in the film that would make you wish that the writing was better and that the bare minimum requirements of comedy were maintained while penning those gags. Sometimes you can't do anything but wish and wish as if there were no tomorrow.
Talking of jokes, there are supposedly many of them and the comic situations are plenty as well, but the laughter that is expected to accompany them is never there. Despite your sincere attempts to offer a smile, you find yourself lost in a grimace most of the time. The comic elements never work, and the rest of it topples down in a heap in no time.
Baburaj does have a fine comic sense that comes to play when the writing is good. Else, his comic outings turn out to be sheer disasters, like we have seen in a couple of films not so long ago. 'Police Maaman' adds itself to the calamity list without much of an effort.
Radha Verma is around as well in the role of the police officer's wife to ensure some female presence. There is nothing much for her or for the other women in the film to do, and they hover around desperately and persistently proving their existence.
'Police Maaman' is thus an uninteresting and hollow exercise in film making that fails to work up any enthusiasm in the viewer. The lack of imagination mars things beyond repair, and it's true that some cheesy sitcoms appear far better in comparison to this uninspiring film.
