Vaazha review: Anand Menen’s coming-of-age film is fun in parts but shallow in politics

Kicking off with a tribute to Mohanlal’s 1989 blockbuster Naduvazhikal, director Anand Menen’s Vaazha (plaintain) serves nostalgia and relatability on a platter, peppered with fast-cuts of boys growing up from sip-ups and egg puffs to cigarettes and beers. The film, with its tagline ‘biopic of a billion boys’, sets up an interesting premise to dissect male loneliness, ‘unworthy’ friendships, and a topic that we have seen multiple times in Malayalam cinema – parental pressure. But disappointingly, it does not show enough courage to tackle these issues head-on. 

The fathers in the film borrows certain traits from popular characters like Spadikam’s Chacko Maashu (played by Thilakan), Oru Vadakkan Selfie’s Manoharan (Vijayaraghavan), and David Kalapparambath (Renji Panicker) in Premam, making us believe that we are in for a feast. It is heartening to see Kottayam Nazeer, Azees Nedumangad, and Noby Marcose, all of whom started as comedians, deliver the performances of a lifetime. Basil Joseph, who plays an extended cameo as a police officer in the film, is his usual charming self with witty one-liners and a brilliant monologue. 

The film deals with divorce in a healthy way, when the character portrayed by Jagadish accepts that it was his son and her wife who should take the decision whether to live together or not.        

It is also hard not to smile at what could be passed off as child-like innocence and youthful exuberance of the boys. But as these boys grow into men, so does the film’s male gaze. Instead of attempting to call out the toxicity among such groups, Vaazha takes the reductionist approach of ‘boys will be boys’ and settles itself into locker-room talk.

Clichés work wonders if done right. From Hollywood classics such as Lawrence of Arabia (1962) to Little Miss Sunshine (2006), one of the oldest clichés in the history of cinema is to divide people into two kinds. Vaazha takes a slight detour from the norm and identifies three kinds of students — the self-determined, the obedient, and the clueless. The film emphatically declares that the story is about the third group of students, isolated by the society yet governed by their parents. 

But at the centre of Vaazha are still just two kinds of people — men and women, categorised into strict gender-based binaries.

The biggest problem faced by the film’s protagonists is navigating life as the “clueless” youth. Even some of their names such as Vivekanandan and Abdul Kalam are in stark contrast to their personalities. Their only relief in life is their friend group, formed early in school. The group displays a number of problematic behaviours from their school days, ranging from porn addiction to picking fights over girls. 

Written by Vipin Das, known for blockbusters such as Jaya Jaya Jaya Jaya Hey (2022) and Guruvayoor Ambala Nadayil (2024), the characters in Vaazha are shown as flawed yet empathetic. However, this empathy is reserved only for the men around them. It preaches to the choir by developing women characters, only to strip them of their agency later. 

Case in point is a heartwarming friendship between the characters played by Meenakshi Unnikrishnan (Maya) and Siju Sunny (Ajo Thomas). Pressured by his friends to confess his non-existent love to Maya, Ajo goes through an imaginary heartbreak after she rejects him. After a drinking session with his mates, Ajo with his friends decide to go to the spot where he meets Maya often — a hospital. 

Maya, who is taking care of her father ailing from chest pain, is subjected to verbal abuse by Ajo. Even if we give the benefit of doubt to the writer on grounds that this is merely a portrayal of how men fail to handle rejections, Maya’s father makes a startling statement that glorifies the group’s action. Giving Ajo a clean chit for his actions, the father ‘admits’ that he himself was the reason Maya “dressed and dreamed like a man.” In a later scene, Maya, who typically wears shirts and jackets, is seen wearing a kurti with no explanation on what made her suddenly change her style.

The problems do not end there.

One of the other woman characters in the film perpetuates the patriarchal and regressive notion, often amplified by men’s rights activists (MRAs), that women are “gold diggers who manipulate men.” Some of the male characters are seen stalking and indirectly slut-shaming a woman, and the film seems to constantly normalise such behaviour. A scene that plays out between two of the guys, while one of them is out buying sanitary pads for a girl, also quickly takes a lewd tone. 

The only woman character that exhibits some kind of agency is the sister (played by Ashwathy B) of one of the protagonists, Abdul Kalam (Anuraj OB). In one scene, she throws hot tea on the hands of her uncle who suggests that she would have got grooms if she was more light-skinned. In a later scene, when her father tells the uncle that he personally would have thrown the tea on his face, it is a rare show of support in the film. 

If the first half sets up a lot of conflict, the second half is where these conflicts blow up. However, the filmmaker rushes to find resolutions. A triggering scene, involving an act of attempted suicide, is portrayed to appeal to shock value, and the camera does not know when to look away.

The music, which Vaazha is heavily reliant on, shows the delicateness of male vulnerability. But the film fails to do justice to it once it decides to become insensitive.

Popular feminist author Bell Hooks, in her book The Will To Change, explores ways in which male violence can be stopped in America. She says that every day in America, men are violent. “Their violence is deemed natural by the psychology of patriarchy, which insists that there is a biological connection between having a penis and the will to do violence. This thinking continues to share notions of manhood in our society,” she writes. However, she also argues that every day in America, there are men who turn away from violence. With the filmmakers announcing a sequel for Vaazha, one can only hope that the second part tackles societal issues in a more nuanced way compared to its predecessor.

Disclaimer: This review was not paid for or commissioned by anyone associated with the film. Neither TNM nor any of its reviewers have any sort of business relationship with the film’s producers or any other members of its cast and crew.