Thaskara Lahala 2010 Malayalam Movie Review - Suraj Venjarammoodu

By now we should know that not every film is even half as interesting as its title. Thaskara Lahala does live up to its title in more ways than one. It does throw in a few petty thieves in lead roles. Secondly, and more importantly, throughout the entire film pandemonium reigns.

There are few films that lack a structural clarity as Thaskara Lahala. It starts off somewhere in a village called Kurukkamthara where four jobless men led by Manikantan (Suraj Venjarammoodu) stage plays as charity events. Their plans to marry off a poor young girl go haywire and they are forced to flee the village. They start living with their mentor Louis Aasan and indulge in some petty thefts to keep the money flowing in.

The kind of things that happen in this film are mind-boggling to say the least. A girl gets raped by a senior cop and ends her life. Along comes a reality show on the atrocities being committed against women, and a social activist demands that a women's police station be set up to solve the problems. The Home Minister is part of the show, and ta da! He agrees to the suggestion and in no time an all women police station is set up to put an end to all troubles faced by women in the state.

In the beginning of the film we see Varsha (Lekshmi Sharma) at Kurukkamthara where she loiters around Mani. And when Mani shifts to another town, lo and behold, she turns up at the place as a cop in the local police station. Quite a small world indeed.

Onscreen advertising isn't anything new, but when it's as brazen as the kind that happens here one can only gape in disbelief. What else would you say when you see a policeman pointing at a hoarding and lecturing his junior at length about the qualities of a fitness massage oil? Believe it or faint, there is a Swami and his assistant who treat impotence with a holy drug, that they tell us has ample doses of an energy capsule mixed in. More promotion is soon to come for hair fixing and what not.

I wish the makers of the film attributed us with brains the size of peanuts at least. That certainly isn't the case, because we get to see a man in dire need of medicines resorting to an amazing trick that has never ever been seen before. He ties two rods or something of the sort together; walks into the store pointing them here and there and proclaims that there is a bomb scare. The terrified pharmacist runs for his life, but not before handing over all the medicines in the prescription.

The climax involves some antique auction where crores of money are expected to come into play. And you have the Home Minister himself offering statues to the customers like a newbie salesman and uttering unmentionable blunders in the process. The scene soon degenerates further with every possible actor rushing in and bashing each other. Expected to raise some giggles, this is a scene which makes us wonder what is being manufactured under the guise of cinema these days.

Thaskara Lahala is as unfunny as it gets, and it could be quite embarrassing to attempt an in-depth analysis of the film. With no further ado, I refuse to comment any further on the acting, the scripting or the directing.