Director Biju’s Georgettan’s Pooram is a movie that puts you through a test of fire. It has a wayward and elongated first half which confidently passes sleaze and sexism for comedy. And those who brave this ordeal get to watch a slightly better second half which makes some degree of sense.
Every joke and comical situation in this supposed ‘family entertainer’ is rooted in blatant sleaze. When the film’s lead man, George (Dileep) bumps into a girl, Merlin (Rejisha Vijayan) at a funeral ceremony, he stares at her with glee and says aloud, “Shall I make her a mother… to my kids?”
This tasteless line comes as no surprise. The film opens to a flashback sequence in which George is introduced to the three guys who would later be his friends. At first, the guys pass him for a bible geek, which is proven wrong when they catch him peeping into their lady teacher’s bathroom. Their friendship is forged over this common ‘hobby’ of peeping into bathrooms and bedrooms. Fast forward to present day, we see the guys who seem to be in their thirties, with no hint of maturity. Jobless and wild as ever, the guys’ favorite pastimes include boozing, stalking women and other things that are generally considered serious crimes. In one instance, the men barge into the bedroom of a girl they haven’t even met before, after tackling her parents. To the girl who looks bewildered and terrified, George announces that her ‘ugly’ parents’ have, after all, “manufactured” an ”interesting product”.
What is creepier than the film’s sense of humour is the fact that the censor board has passed the film with a U certificate. This isn’t unprecedented, though. One of Dileep’s earlier blockbusters, a ‘family-drama’ titled Mr Marumakan, had a supposed comic scene in which the protagonist, played by Dileep, hires a conman to rape a woman. In Mayamohini again, a family-entertainer, a comedy scene involves two guys trying to rape Dileep who is in a female get-up. These films, oddly enough, had managed to collect a good amount from the box-office.
In all fairness though, Georgettan’s Pooram has no rape jokes. In the second half, the film tries to become a sports drama, with the men taking up the game of Kabaddi to reclaim their favourite hangout spot – ironically – from its rightful legal owner. But it’s hard to take the portion seriously as George and his friends do not come across as innocuous men who would shed their laziness and insensitivity for any reason. They are just unemployable loafers with no distinct qualities.
*****
Dileep, Sharafuddeen and Vinay Fort, plainly, don’t look like peers. Dileep, who is 48, tries his best to behave like a thirty-year-old man – he dances at temple fests, acts like a naughty little boy in front of his mother, and tries to woo Rejisha who is in her early twenties. Moreover, he body shames women who are past their youth. “I didn’t come to see this crone. Where are the young girls you had promised to bring?” he asks a driving school tutor whose students are older women.
Recommended
Despite everything he does, Dileep’s act falls through, and he appears the way he is – as a middle-aged man desperately trying to shed years off his age. There is a cringe-worthy scene in which he looks at Malavika Nair, a 17-year-old actress in amazement and declares that she is ‘great work’.
That Rejisha Vijayan, a State Award-winning actress, chose to act in this film is unfortunate. She plays a young, soon-to-be-nun whom George romances forcefully. There are actors like Ranji Panikker and Chemban Vinod Jose who sincerely try to hold their own in this chaos. However, their performances do not matter as this is a film that deserves to be forgotten at the earliest as a bad dream.
*****
The Georgettan’s Pooram review is a Silverscreen original article. It was not paid for or commissioned by anyone associated with the movie. Silverscreen.in and its writers do not have any commercial relationship with movies that are reviewed on the site.