Saturday, November 12, 2022

Saturday Night: "Just like Stanley, even the audience will say WTF!!!"

One of the most sought after directors among the present crop is Roshan Andrews & understandably so, after all he has an impressive array of movies to his credit. Hence when his latest release, "Saturday Nights" was announced, there were appreciable expectations & more so, as he was collaborating with Nivin Pauly with whom he had earlier crafted the impressive "Kayamkulam Kochunni". Interestingly, the team embarked on an extensive promotional tour & from the looks of it, it seemed like a bindaas fun movie. Well it wasn't to be as I felt it was competing with "Casanovva" regarding which was more irritating.

Stanley (Nivin), Sunil (Aju), Ajith (Siju Wilson) & Justin (Saiju Kurup) has been friends since childhood and stuck out for each other whenever the need arose. However, some unsavory scenarios put a spanner to their relationship & they drift apart. A few years later, Sunil turns up at Justin's doorstep for help but the situation spiraled out of control putting the latter's job at risk. Left with no option, Justin embarks on a journey to find Sunil who had vanished & sought the help of Stanley and Ajith. However, life has changed a lot & this journey turned out to be one where they try to rekindle their friendship. 

Frankly speaking, I certainly had high expectations about this project since the script was penned by Naveen Bhaskar who had movies like "Anuraga Karikkin Vellam" etc. to his credit. But it turned out to be pretty shallow with most of the humour barely taking flight (except for the magistrate's dance . It seemed more like a wannabe "Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara" & even the so called 'relationship' that the four shared, I barely find it believable as to how they were friends in the first place coz apart from Stanley & Sunil, it was very evident that the other two were more concerned about themselves. In effect, the whole story as such felt incoherent and lacked any sense of direction. On the technical side, it was fine but nothing that deserves special mention.

It would be unfair to put the blame on the artists when the story itself is so weak but even then some of them weren't quite upto the mark. Nivin has done a fairly decent job as Stanley considering what that character went thru. However, when Siju & Saiju assumes that kind of vibe towards the end it came across as really pathetic since it screamed 'artificiality' while Aju was average. Coming to the female artists, Grace Antony was good in the limited opportunity she was offered while I didn't even understand the purpose of Saniya Iyappan's role which was equally poorly performed by her. As for the rest, nothing much to talk about.

Verdict: The use of psychedelic colors & wacky trailer certainly gives us the impression of a fun movie. However, it turned out to be a test of our patience for most parts. In short, don't bother!!!

Rating: 1.5/5

Regards...Ben



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