‘Odum Kuthira Chaadum Kuthira’ movie review: An absurdist comedy that ends up in no man’s land

Towards the fag end of Odum Kuthira Chaadum Kuthira, when one character asks – “Do you sense any logic in this joke?”, it appears to be one last-ditch effort to convey the filmmaker’s intentions to the audience. Clearly, the film is set in an absurdist landscape. It is the kind of film in which the father of the protagonist, who has slipped into a coma, would say, ‘Till now, he was a question mark to us, now he has become a com(m)a’.

But such jokes, which land, are few and far between, for even absurdist humour requires a sense of timing and rhythm for it to work. What we get instead is a series of misfires that punctuate a screenplay with no sense of direction, just like the protagonist Eby (Fahadh Faasil). We are pulled into his life the night before his wedding, when his fiancée, Nidhi (Kalyani Priyadarshan), expresses a wish. In the quest to fulfill the same, Eby ends up facing a crisis.

Althaf Salim, who had an impressive debut with Njandukalude Nattil Oridavela, in which he mined humour out of a morbid situation, appears to be ill at ease in his second outing. In Odum Kuthira… too, he is in a way attempting to give a humorous treatment to a difficult situation. Characters struggle to deal with the turns that their minds are taking. Nidhi completely lives in the land of her dreams, while Eby is in the grips of a recurring dream, and his father frequently contemplates suicide to be with his dead wife.

Somewhere amidst the muddled narrative, one can sense the initial vision to use humour to portray a depressed state of mind. It is an admirable endeavour, but one fraught with risks. Unfortunately, almost everything that could go wrong in such an attempt has gone wrong here. Midway through the film, it branches off into another story about a foodie (Revathi Pillai), who is struggling to live up to her boyfriend’s demands for her to lose weight. This side story, which has only a tenuous connection to Eby’s, takes centre stage for a while, without really adding anything to the film.

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The sheer aimlessness of the narrative makes us wonder whether the attempt is to give us a sense of Eby’s mindscape, but the answer is more obvious – the screenplay is just too messed up. Some of the plainly-written lines of dialogue, except for the few genuinely funny lines, are further proof of this fact. This is also one of those rare occasions in which even Fahadh Faasil struggles to make an impact.

The makers might have attempted to craft a quirky film on people dealing with vagaries of their mind, but Odum Kuthira Chaadum Kuthira ends up in no man’s land. It is not much fun to be there.

Odum Kuthira Chaadum Kuthira is currently running in theatres