The Pet Detective (Malayalam)
Chaos is disorienting. In life, we only begin to make sense of it long after the dust has settled, if at all. But in cinema, chaos is premeditated, hilarious even. What feels like disorder is, in fact, design. The writer meticulously constructs chaos to tell a compelling story. All the fun, though, hinges on how seamlessly the knots come undone in the end.
Director Praneesh Vijayan’s The Pet Detective conjures enjoyable chaos, but is not entirely successful in making sense of it.
Written by Praneesh and Jai Vishnu, The Pet Detective opens with a gang war in Mexico. Jose Alula (Renji Panicker), a Malayali private detective, lands up at the shootout. He has only one goal — to take a picture of Sambai, an international overlord, whose face is unknown to the world. Jose clicks the photograph, but Sambai spots him. He then flees to Kerala and starts a detective agency, which his son, Tony Jose Alula (Sharaf U Dheen), later takes over.
Tony was not always particularly passionate about being a detective. But when his childhood sweetheart Kaikeyi’s (Anupama Parameswaran) army veteran father insists that he will only marry his daughter to someone in the forces, Tony is determined to solve a big case and win her hand. Meanwhile, Tony and Kaikeyi’s schoolmate Rajath Menon (Vinay Forrt), now an inspector of police, is also hell bent on wooing her.
Add to this mix the return of Sambai, a Tamil smuggler, a Mangalorean gangster, a serial killer, a missing child, Kannan the Shih Tzu, and a bunch of exotic fish — you get a chaotic, partly fun but uneven film.
Sharaf U Dheen effortlessly shuttles between comedy and action. The Pet Detective is also his debut as a producer, and he lines up a fantastic array of actors. Vijaya Raghavan, who plays the role of a subservient husband by day and a sinister conspirator by night, is fantastic. Renji Panicker, as usual, delivers comedy with deadpan sarcasm. Vinay Forrt is a hoot.
Joemon Jyothir, Shyam Mohan, and Praseedha make their appearances memorable. Anupama Parameswaran appears in most scenes and does a neat job, but has little to do with the decisive plot points of the film.
The action pieces work well, and cinematographer Anend C Chandran ensures that the visuals enhance the film’s quirk.
The Pet Detective seems to have taken inspiration from the 1994 Jim Carrey starrer Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, in which a detective is hired to find a sports team’s missing mascot, a dolphin. Though Tony ends up finding Kannan the Shih Tzu, earning him the moniker ‘pet detective’, the story hardly allows for any moments between him and the missing animals he finds, unlike Ace Ventura.
The comedy is mostly physical, with a few one-liners that make you laugh out loud. But after a point, it feels as though too many incidents keep getting added to the plot, leaving little time to assimilate what is going on. The writing appears rushed, and sometimes, you are still trying to register a character, while five others have already joined the frenzy.
The final act takes you back to films like Siddique-Lal’s Ram Ji Rao Speaking (1989), and Priyadarshan’s Vettom (2004), in which all the loose ends in the plot come together in the climax to tie themselves up. But The Pet Detective’s chaos goes way too overboard to let the fun stand out.
Despite all the unevenness, The Pet Detective is an enjoyable watch, if you remember not to stress about the plot racing too far too fast.
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.