Imagine that tin game most of us played as kids – many names written in small chits of paper dropped inside a tin that is then shaken vigourously. After 160-plus minutes of Alphonse Puthren’s Malayalam comedy Gold, the head feels somewhat like that tin. I am still pulling out names from it, and I have managed to recall 30 so far.
Star-studded is not the right word for Gold. The film has actors spilled all across the script and just as soon as you catch up with one name, the person is nowhere to be seen. It is of course Alphonse, a filmmaker known for penning long scripts and being generous with the cast. But in his two previous much-adored ventures if it added to the fun and frolic, in Gold, it is mostly just chaos. There is promise, and there are moments, but somewhere in its journey to the screen, the script lets go of substance.
Prithviraj plays the lead in Gold, the one actor who gets to enjoy a good number of frames in the film. The film starts with him in a bed in a very homely home, at the end of a long lane barely wide enough for a car to pass. Quite a chunk of the film unfolds in this house and its compound, where one-morning Joshy (Prithviraj) and his mother (Mallika Sukumaran) find a Bolero truck parked at the gate, making it impossible for another vehicle to pass through. How Joshy handles what is in the truck forms the basic plotline. Conveniently leaving him alone most of the time but otherwise popping up with goodies is the caricature of an overly affectionate mother. You realise Mallika is playing the stereotype of mother characters when she keeps producing chaya (tea) and snacks for everyone from the son to the random cops visiting the house, accompanied by a mellow strumming of the veena.
There are more digs along the way. A rich man (Shammi Thilakan) is in talks with another rich man (Lalu Alex) for a marriage alliance between their children. Nayanthara, the female lead, plays Shammi’s daughter, to be married to Ajmal Ameer, son of Lalu Alex. The two fathers talk of dowry in mammoth terms – a truck of gold, a shopping complex, two cars, and at the moment five bottles of single malt whiskey. Their conversation progresses so casually that you know this is another satire along the way. Nayanthara has about five scenes in all, and in three of these, she is on her living room couch, eating and watching TV.
Watch: Trailer of Gold
One can argue that this is the kind of film which doesn’t follow a formula and characters can get in and out at any moment. It would have been fun if the makers could have pulled it off, dropping known faces just for a few shots and surprising you with them. But Nayanthara’s character, even if intended to add to the comedy and not to be taken seriously, is very much lacking in adding any effect.
The film is a comedy, and there are a few hilarious moments. Unfortunately, most of the rest fall flat. Lalu Alex’s role, totally designed for laughs, is simply unfunny. More than the exaggerated actions, it is often the casual dialogues that tease the humour out, as they did in Alphonse’s previous films. Gold has some of these, like the police station scenes involving Baburaj and Shabareesh Varma, as well as some of the exchanges between Prithviraj and Saiju Kurup. Prithviraj does handle comedy well, especially in the scenes where he is anxious and trying to pass everything off as cool. He has a couple of stunt scenes too, tailor-made for the masses because you don’t really know why else he straightaway punches people in the night, without asking questions.
Alphonse’s strong point has always been music. People are still humming the songs of his seven-year-old Premam. In Gold, there is that familiar fast rhythm accompanying scenes, and it works too, though it briefly pulls you away to Neram and Premam days. Rajesh Murugesan repeats his role as the composer, and so do a lot of Alphonse’s favourite cast members, sprinkled across songs and one-shot scenes, most of which have nothing to do with the film – just a song and dance aside, like a stage prop.
Siju Wilson, Soubin Shahir, Ganapathy, Shebin Wilson, and Lakshmi Marikar, all come and go. Skilled actors like Sharaf U Dheen, Roshan Mathew, Sabumon, Jaffer Idukki, and Vinay Forrt drop by too, while Krishna Sankar and Chemban Vinod have slightly longer roles. It would have been fun to see all these familiar faces sliding by if the script had effortlessly tucked them in and made their brief presence memorable.
Somehow, it seems like someone snatched the tools from Alphonse and did not let him have his way. While his signature style is underlying somewhere in Gold, even the ending – more like the last paragraph of a moral science lesson – looks so manufactured that the film simply seems tampered with. One would expect much more than a can-sit-through from him.
Disclaimer: This review was not paid for or commissioned by anyone associated with the film. Neither TNM nor any of its reviewers have any sort of business relationship with the film’s producers or any other members of its cast and crew.