Gold: "All that glitters is not gold!!!"

One of the most awaited movies of the year, Alphonse Puthran's "Gold" has finally hit the screens after quite a few deferred release announcements. The last time when his film was released, I was in Israel doing my Postdoc & I still vividly remember how I wished "Premam" would be released there since it became a rage back home. Interestingly, seven years later his "Gold" became the first Malayalam movie to release in Israel & kudos to Prithviraj Productions & Magic Frames for making unprecedented efforts to tap into as many nations as possible. As expected there was a huge hype & expectations had gone through the roof, and living upto it was always going to be a tall ask. 

As in the past, Alphonse has penned the script as well which sounded decent but when it was picturised onto the celluloid, it lacked the thrill that was expected to be imparted. Joshi (Prithvi) is a mobile shop owner who lived along with his mom (Mallika Sukumaran) on the banks of Periyar. One fine morning, they find an abandoned vehicle with portable speakers parked at their gate which meant that he couldn't even get his new car into their premises. Left with no option, Joshi files a police complaint (who incidentally is facing a similar issue) & what subsequently happens as a result of that forms the basis of this movie. 

The first time I saw "Premam", it seemed to me like a livelier fun version of Cheran's "Autograph" & I certainly did enjoy the manner in which Alphonse had crafted it. Coming to this project, many of his signature styles are there be it the non linear timelines, character names and captions written in bold, shots of nature and of course the deft editing. But after a point, the novelty wears off and quite a few of the things stick out like a sore thumb like the nature shots didn't make sense at times. The humour which was supposed to be the USP works only in patches primarily because of the repetition especially the ones that involved Lalu Alex which kind of got irritating after a point. On the technical side, Anend Chandran & Vishwajith Odukkathil did a decent job with the visuals, Rejesh Murugan's music was average though the BGM at times was impressive while Alphonse could have made the movie much shorter. 

One of the major positives is the enthusiasm & confidence displayed by Prithvi who was spot on as the protagonist and giving him adequate support was his mom (felt more content could have been given to her role rather than merely cook food), Baburaj & Shammi Thilakan. The rest of the cast pretty much had cameo roles of hardly any significance except for maybe Vinay Fort. Actually even Nayanthara was in a cameo & didn't quite understand the point of casting her as it could have been easily done by anyone else like Kalyani or Nikhila Vimal. 

Verdict: Thanks to the wide release, the movie would have obviously garnered a fantastic initial. It's not a movie that is going to leave you irritated as some of the humour & Prithvi's performance was entertaining enough. However, it falls well short of expectations since what we get is plated gold & not the actual one. 

Rating: 2/5

Regards...Ben