About twenty minutes into the film, three newly joined students in the midst of a nagging or rather ragging problem in their college are looking for a “Local resource” to solve the problem. One of the guys comes up with the idea of hanging out every evening in pubs and bars of the city for the next 3-4 weeks to identify that resource. The other two gleefully agree to their friend’s brilliant idea. With Aavesham, the latest Malayalam film deemed a theatrical super hit and now out on OTT, the trend of aimless and directionless youngsters escaping from Kerala after school to get into some college outside the state and engage in excessive drinking and vomiting continues unabated.
Aavesham is another Malayalam film set in Bengaluru – a city most young Mallu filmmakers are obsessed with these days. And they study what else but Engineering in a college where students wear white shirt, black trousers, red tie and grey blazers as uniform. And what is the story about? When these three students are badly traumatised by seniors under the garb of ragging, they seek the help of a local gunda or a gangster to fix the seniors once and for all. As we continue to watch the film the trauma gets transferred from the students to us, viewers.
I haven’t seen a listless film in Malayalam in recent times. Fahad Faasil, usually an actor in total control of his character, irritates us throughout in a badly written role. Half the blame for the bad depiction must go to the writer and director Jithu Madhavan though seemingly FaFa tries to do his best. The character of a quirky don is not new in cinema. In particular, in Malayalam cinema, we have seen Mammootty don this role a few times in the past with mixed success.
The film which apparently starts with a novel premise, meanders beyond imagination as we struggle to cope with what’s being dished out in the name of comedy. If that was bad, what follows under the pretext of mass or masala entertainment is worse. Aavesham which is about 150 minutes long can be characterised in 3 parts. The first part of 50 minutes is bad. Then things slightly take a turn and the next 50 minutes are worse and the final stretch of 50 minutes gets even worse. In a gem of a lament, Fahad’s character apparently frustrated, screams that he doesn’t even get likes for his posts on Insta! So much for comedy and mass!
Malayalam filmmakers are usually good at making real, meaningful and rooted-to-the-ground cinema. When they venture out to copy Tamil and Telugu filmmakers to make films of the “Marana mass” type, they end up making Aavesham type films. I get that it was a hit film and is being celebrated big time on social media but, to me, it is an ordinary film that spends most of its time glorifying drinking and smoking and showcasing youngsters who have no purpose in life. Kudos to the person who worked on the supers – as he/she had to ensure that the disclaimer about the ill effects of smoking and drinking had to be inserted in 57 of the 60 scenes in the film.
In the film, a character keeps asking ‘Happy alle? (Aren’t you happy?). As a viewer and a reviewer, the feeling after watching the film is exactly the opposite. Aavesham is an overhyped film that suffers from poor writing. It is now streaming on … well, don’t bother.
AnandKumarRSonFilms 
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