Review– Apoorvaragam
Producer– Siyad Koker
Director– Sibi Malayil
Cast– Nishan, Asif Ali, Nithya Menon, Vinay etc.
Music– Vidyasagar
Background Music– Biji Bal
Lyrics– Santhosh Verma
Story, Screenplay, dialogues– G.S.Anand, Najeem Koya
Review By : Unni /Kerala9.com
A director who has delivered many memorable films in the past, Sibi Malayil hasn’t
been giving us any real good movies for quite some time. Now, with ‘Apoorvaragam’ he
seems all set to hit back, delivering a film that proves that Sibi Malayil is only too happy
to change with the times.
‘Apoorvaragam’ begins very much like a usual campus flick. Roopesh (Nishan) and
Tomy (Asif Ali) are first year students and Roopesh in college. Roopesh develops a
liking for Nancy (Nithya Menon), who is the daughter of a rich guy. He is in love with
her and wants her to reciprocate his love. Tomy too desires this to happen and with the
help of a couple of other friends, Roopesh succeeds in winning over Nancy’s love. But
then, Tomy starts behaving rather strangely. He calls us Nancy’s father and, calling
himself a ‘well-wisher’ tells him that Nancy is in love with a ‘good-for-nothing’ guy.
Later, things take such a turn that Roopesh and Nancy decide to go in for a register
marriage, without informing Nancy’s parents. They do so and Nancy returns home,
as if nothing has happened. The ‘well-wisher’ does his job, that of informing Nancy’s
father of this too. And from here, the story takes a new turn, a totally unexpected turn.
Well, if we go in for a real critical analysis, it wouldn’t be fair to call the movie a good
one. It isn’t good on the whole. But it isn’t too bad either. It’s in fact a package of mixes.
Things don’t seem to go well in the first half, especially in the opening sequences. The
performances, the execution of the scenes, the script everything seems unimpressive.
Then, after a while, it gets better. Post interval, things seem to have picked up and it
seems you are watching an altogether different movie, treatment-wise. On the whole
there are plusses as well as minuses and ‘Apoorvaragam’ is not a total let down.
Performances
Nishan is rather unimpressive as Roopesh while Asif Ali is good as Tomy. Nithya Menon
does full justice to her role, that of Nancy. Jagathy Sreekumar has a rather insignificant
role to play in the film and appears in just about a couple of scenes, which could even
have been avoided. Vinay, who had done an insignificant role, impresses as Narayanan,
friend to Roopesh and Tomy.
Technical aspects
Cinematography by Ajayan Vincent is good. Art-direction by Prashant Madhav suits the
mood of the film.
Music
Biji Bal’s background score is in sync with the plot, but the songs, set to tune by
Vidyasagar, are far from impressive.
Script
It’s script that plays the villain here. It seems that the scenarists G.S.Anand and Najeem
Koya, desperately wanted the second half of the film to stand out. They seem to have
concentrated much on making the second half impressive while the first half, especially
the first few scenes, seems to have been neglected. They should have done a much better
work of the script on the whole.
Direction
What had gone wrong about the script seems to have gone wrong about the direction too.
Sibi Malayil, a veteran of many memorable movies, seems to have paid less attention to
the initial portion of the film. He definitely could have done better. But of late, with not-
so-good scripts coming up, Sibi Malayil hasn’t been able to do much with the direction
part. We indeed miss the kind of films that he had churned out with Lohithadas as the
scenarist.
Overall verdict- Not bad, but could have been better! Poor scripting!!
Rating: 2.5/5