Chotta Mumbai

The hero Vasco da Gama (Mohan Lal) lives in Fort Kochi with his family consisting of his wrestler father and 2 sisters.  He has 3 friends and all of them are involved in hooligan activities.  Vasco and his gang decide to mend their ways and try their luck outside India. In order to get Malaysian visa (for himself and his friends), vasco pledges his house without the knowledge of his father and the agent (Kochin Haniffa) dupes him.  Here our villain enters..Kalabhavan  Mani, a corrupt but suspended police officer, who kills an honest officer, which is witnessed by Vasco and his father.  How Vasco  deals with these 2 issues (i.e. pledged house and witness of murder) and how he comes out of it forms the rest of the story.  And there is a heroine too, Bhavana who plays an autorickshaw driver.


The movie is able to provide occasional relief with good comic performance especially by Bijjukuttan who plays Susheelan (one of the gang members of Vasco) and Paambu Chacko played by Rajan P Dev.


The movie began well with the narrator describing about himself, his friends, his family, his locality and how he created a mess of his life.   I guess the first 30 minutes were like that, but after that, it was a waste of time.  Why the story went haywire?


I usually watch movies because of directors and Anwar Rashid whose last movie that I saw (RajaManikyam) was a good masala movie, which had all the elements in the right mix and provided good entertainment value.  That was the only thing i expected from this movie (entertainment), but apart from the first 30 minutes, the movie fell flat on its nose......what a crap.....what was the point of this movie....had Anwar Rashid lost his mind..these were the thoughts coming to my mind....While watching this movie, 2 movies were pounding hard on my subconscious, Thirakatha and Udayananu Tharam.  In Thirakatha, Ajay Chandran the superstar gives his already committed dates to Akbar (the debutant hit director), who did not even cast him in the first place.  Similarly in Udayan Anu Tharam, Saroj Kumar the super star tells the director, he wont do this and do that as it would affect his persona...............my point is, "Was Chotta Mumbai a casualty of Super star syndrome"?? That Ajay Chandran of Thirakatha does resemble Mohan Lal somewhat in manners and looks also adds credence to this theory....Was Ranjith (director of Thirakatha) providing subtle hints to the viewers what our super stars are up to through his movie or is it just a fig of my imagination, can somebody throw some light here....or lets ask Anwar Rashid!!