Priyan Ottathilanu review: This feel-good film goes a tad overboard with the goodness
The film is titled Priyan Ottathilanu – literally, Priyan is on the run -- and it suits it well. But it also might have been Paavam Paavam Priyan or Nanma Niranjavan Priyan – take-offs from earlier film titles, also apt to describe Priyan. He is full of nanma – goodness – and he is fully paavam – too nice. He would definitely know all these films by heart, such is his love for cinema. But how he tries to reach that dream world, while he runs for just about everyone circling his life is the story of Priyan, short for Priyadarshan. The film is, as expected, quite pleasing, quite the ‘feel-good’ type, but also a little tiresome as all the helpfulness gets to you after a point.
The film begins with little Priyan standing on a village path, in school uniform, as quite symbolically an announcement comes from a moving vehicle – a new film will see director Priyadarshan and Mammootty come together. Little Priyan is also Priyadarshan, crazy about films. And as a grownup, you see him teaming up with a new director, and a producer (Harisree Asokan, in form) who is eager to make a film with Mammootty in the lead. But Priyan does not write films for a living – he is a homoeo doctor. Although you wonder when he gets to practise with all the running around he is doing – as the association president of an apartment building that has too many problems, as the concerned relative to his cousin and family, and a Good Samaritan to pretty much everyone he meets. The young wife (Aparna Das) complains that she and their little girl always get the last priority.
Sharaf U Dheen, in a version that’s slightly reminiscent of his role in Halal Love Story, plays the do-gooder. He is the epitome of calmness, none of the many demands and requests of him ever making him lose his cool. For someone who has to run 10 errands before he has his breakfast, he doesn’t have a single hair out of place. Antony Sony, directing the film, has quite confidently placed the biggest task of all on Sharaf U Dheen’s responsible shoulders – play Priyan, the nicest guy you could think of. It is easy to imagine the actor opening a shelf of ‘guy types’, and pulling out a different one for every new film. He switches between villain (Varathan) and comedian (Oshana) and nice guy (Naradhan) with the ease of changing coats from a closet.
Watch: Trailer of the film
Antony has got the rest of his casting right too – from Aparna, who draws little attention to herself, playing the driven-to-her-limits partner, to Sminu Sijo playing a Kudumbashree worker, everyone plays along to the hurried tone of the script, influenced by Priyan’s endless rush. Writers Abhayakumar and Anil Kurian have written the characters with a lot of care – focusing on the little things they fret over.
Biju Sopanam’s character Kuttettan is especially interesting – his one-liners are often so blunt, like a child blurting out innocent but truthful remarks, it makes you laugh and it makes you think. At several places in the script you are left wondering why the person who speaks the truth is treated so poorly. Priyan’s sister-in-law Keerthi is another example, who blurts out the problems she faces in her marriage. The rather conservative husband then says, “this is her attitude”.
Priyan however never goes against the tide, he has to make everyone happy. There is no confrontation, and he is ever ready to apologise for anyone else’s fault. This can at times be frustrating, but also painfully realistic. He cooks up a rather humiliating story in a situation where he has to rescue a troubled woman friend, and tells her later that he couldn’t beat the villains down but could only create stories to save them both.
Nyla Usha, who enters the script midway, plays a woman with her own set of troubles. To her, he says, he never gets disappointed at personal losses because wins don’t seem to matter if he lets down the others with him. Like the rest of the characters, hers too is given a short background – where Leela Samson features with all her grace – and not left in the lurch as a passerby in awe of the hero.
The writer duo perhaps overdoes the goodness of it all. It might have worked had Priyan shown a weak point as humans do. You can lean back and criticise him for putting his wife and child’s interests below many others, but the script doesn’t jibe him for it. It literally paints him as a saint, who, if you are honest, you’d like to push away from the scene of the action and into his own darned life, badly awaiting his attention.