3 Kings Malayalam Movie
V K Prakash's 3 Kings has Indrajith, Jayasurya and Kunchacko Boban playing three brothers - Shankaran, Bhaskaran and Raman - who simply can't stand the sight of each other. All their lives they have been at each other's necks, trying hard to get into each other's ways. They are in love with three sisters Anju, Renju and Manju (Samvrutha, Ann Augustine and Sandhya), and the girls' dad is a money lender (Jagathy) to whom they owe quite a bit.
Spelunking was the last thing on my mind, when I went over to watch the film. And then I realize that this film is all about a treasure hunt. Apparently Tipu Sultan had some serious issues with these guys (their forefathers rather) and they had to hide a golden idol that's worth a fortune in some cave, before Tipu lay his hands on it. now a few centuries later it has been left to the three brothers to hunt out the treasure, and thereby redeem their ancestral home that is on mortgage.
Thus it's Tipu Sultan who is the main villain of the piece here. Ain't that funny? If you don't think it is, it's still a lot finnier than what you get to see on screen. Let me give you a taste of humor in 3 Kings. The three men get appointed at a call center, and have to answer customer queries related to a tread mill, a mixer and a washing machine. They switch the instruction manuals at their work desks and end up giving the weirdest advice to the callers.
A woman rings up to complain about her mixer and follows the instructions for the washing machine at the other end. She follows the counsel per se, and whips up a few clothes in her mixer. A man who has issues with his tread mill does the same, and another one who has problems with his washing machine ends up inside it.
Ugggh. If that wasn't enough, you have Jagathy Sreekumar on an air plane, with a pilot lying on the floor of the cock pit dead drunk. There is Jagathy's aid of course, who is flying the plane in the pilot's absence. They have had experience riding a car, and what do they do to save their skins? They pull and push the lever up and down, until the plane sees the runway in sight and has a neat non-bumpy landing that even pilots would only dream of.
Ah! There is no sense in seeking sense in a nonsense comedy, I'm told. But when someone goes hammer and tongs on your intelligence with a vengeance, you are likely to get upset. All we are asking for is some decent laughs, and when even that is denied, things turn out to be pretty pathetic.
The film tries to dig at your funny bone, by spoofing an album song that's famous for some very strange reasons. Bilsila hai Bilsila goes the lyrics of the spoof. There are also attempts to cash in on the real image of the stars. Jaysurya remarks that Kunchacko has been around on the scene for 'quite a while' now. Indrajith defends himself and suggests that he wants his 'younger brother to be established first'. And when he later sees Ann Augustine and Kunchako together, wonders aloud if it isn't Elsamma and the Aankutty.
I might have missed a point out there, but all I could see is that the three girls are equally dumb. Perhaps it might have given some sort of a vicarious pleasure to someone at least, who liked the idea of these girls mouthing the most ludicrous lines, and getting insulted by the boys for it. I don't know really, because laughter certainly doesn't arise from any of their inane statements.
Performances in the film are earnest. All the six lead actors do their very best and try to look as convincing as possible. It isn't an easy job at all, given the deplorable state of affairs. But they give it their finest shot, and swim against the tide.
I have always been looking forward to V K Prakash's films, because they have a technical finesse that is often very impressive. Scripts are what have pulled him down time and again, and I have been hoping that he gets to make a really good film on an interesting script. But this time, everything has gone wrong. I see neither content nor technique that's worth a discussion in 3 Kings.
Entertainment, they say is relative. I wonder if someone out there would see all that goes on for more than two hours of the running time of 3 kings as amusing. As for me, I give this film a total thumbs down. These are three kings who need to be sent on an exile real bad, with immediate effect.
