Thattumpurathu Achuthan Review: an unexciting experience

Understanding the outdated feel of a script is also a talent. What Lal Jose perhaps is lacking at this point in his career is that. Thattumpurathu Achuthan, his latest outing scripted by M Sindhuraj is a script that should have got shelved a decade back. The humor that comes in the dialogues is the major relief points in this movie. And with a scattered second half, this movie is an unexciting experience.

A simple young man named Achuthan is our hero. He is a Krishna devotee. Achuthan, by the way, gets wrongly accused as a thief in an attempt to help his friend. And in another juncture in life Achuthan himself takes up the responsibility of saving the pride of a girl who was being blackmailed by someone. How Achuthan deals with both situations is what Thattumpurathu Achuthan showing.

The entire first half and some portions of the second half will make us feel that this will be a movie on the lines of Sindhuraj’s previous scripts like Pullipulikalum Aattinkuttiyum, Elsamma Enna Aankutty etc. But after a few minutes into the second half, the script loses its grip totally and multiple subplots just make it look a bit too clumsy for us. It is trying desperately to include everything in an entertaining manner, but it just wasn’t working. The songs and comedy subplots become overly excessive. Thattumpurathu Achuthan is one of those films that drags the audience backward.

Now that his script selection isn’t working in favor, I feel Kunchacko Boban should think about playing characters that are exciting. It is so hard to distinguish Achuthan from the kind of characters Kunchacko Boban has played in the last couple of years. Hareesh Kanaran as the companion of the hero was fine with his witty bits. Vijayaraghavan was okay. Sravana the new face had very little to do here. Shajon is more of a comedian here. Bindu Panicker, Nedumudi Venu, Adhish Praveen, Kochu Preman etc. are the other noticeable names here.

The effort is definitely there from Lal Jose to elevate this movie to the level of a typical festival entertainer. But the script by Sindhuraj severely lacks uniqueness. A hero getting misunderstood and proving his innocence and getting praised by everyone, in the end, is an idea that needs to be carbon dated. Maybe Sindhuraj knew that flaw and added one more major subplot involving the heroine and that one was a really peripheral preach. Roby Varghese Raj has given the movie a visual beauty. Deepankuran’s songs are good, but almost all the songs were forcefully inserted into the movie. The stunts looked bizarre.

Thattumpurathu Achuthan’s aim is to be a typical entertainer and because of that aim it doesn’t take an effort to be unique in any way. And that makes it a dull movie with a lot of predictable and familiar scenes. Better writing of the second half could have given the movie a passable comedy tag.