Keralites think that even a 20-year old Malayalam film can inspire filmmakers to copy or remake it in other languages. But these days, every other Malayalam film seems to be a mishmash of stories sourced from other languages.
Until now, we have not seen films that are copied entirely from a single source, without any tweaking of the original story. Director V K Prakash may get the distinction of being the first to do so in recent times. His latest venture Gulumal-The Escape, scripted by Rajesh Y V, is a remake of the Hindi film Bluffmaster.
The story is about a youth Jerry (Jayasurya), who makes a living by swindling money. One day, another youngster Ravi (Kunchako Boban), who is in dire need of money, seeks Jerry's tutelage and becomes his partner. From here on, it becomes a game for them to cheat people and outsmart the other in their pursuits.
The narrative in the first half does not give the viewer a chance to ruminate about the proceedings on the screen. It may be because of the jokes cracked by the leading men or gags performed by the omnipresent Suraj Venjaramood and Bijukuttan, who play a team of cops connected to the anti-terrorist wing. But the fun wears the audience down by the beginning of the second half.
The easygoing story turns heavy when the duo gets a chance to cheat a rich NRI Aamir (Devan) by selling him a fake Raja Ravi Varma painting for millions of rupees.
Director V K Prakash uses his skills honed in the advertising field to make this film visually rich. But the hackneyed content lets him down.
The cake in the histrionics department is shared equally by Jayasurya and Kunchako Boban. In the last few films, Jayasurya has been taking up characters with negative traits, so it feels repetitive. Otherwise, his performance is decent.
Kunchako Boban tries to look younger by sporting a stubble and succeeds, to an extent. The performance of Suraj Venjaramood (it seems he is not bored of spoofing Mammootty, which has become his trademark) and Bijukuttan in a supposedly separate comedy track works well in the beginning but crumbles after a while.
This comic caper would have been an ideal escape as mentioned in the tagline of title but the lazy approach by the makers makes it fall short of expectations.
Rediff Rating: 
