Da Thadiya Review


Man has an innate curiosity for anything out of proportion. Whether it is a Lilliputian or an obese, the onlooker enjoys a sudden outburst of untamable laughter. Aashiq Abu in his latest film “Da Thadiya” focuses his lens upon the often unobservable and untold misery, struggle and agony behind a smiling chubby and plumb faces of ‘thadiyans’. Once again the script writers Shyam Pushker, Dileep Nair and Abhilash Kumar succeed in penning another crowd puller in their path breaking lucid style of scripting which they inaugurated in Salt & Pepper.

Hailing from the founder family of Prakash Congress, Luke John Prakash (shekher Menon) and Sunny Jose Prakash (Sreenadh Bhasi) lead a happy go lucky apolitical life in Kochi where the former is busy settling the troubles created by later. Luke, nicknamed as Thadiyan, has a strange bond to a bulky girl Ann Mary Thadikkaran(Ann Augustine) as he keeps a very personal and compromising secret of her. Ann Mary’s LIC family leaves him all of a sudden for their ancestral home as her grand father won a lottery. Many years later, she returns slim and pretty and at her compulsion Luke undergoes an ayurvedic treatment at Rahul Vydyar’s (Nivin Pauly) clinic where he plunges into a whirlpool of problems and he emerges as a new born holding his family baton, form the gist of the story.
Shekher Menon’s ease and flexible debut performance stuns everybody and Ann Augustine essayed Ann Mary’s role in a cute fashion. Sreenath Bhasi perfected Sunny Jose Prakash. Maniyan pilla and Edavela babu displayed a stylish performance with their party motto ‘Prakasham Parakkatte”. Grandmother as knight rider has a terrific impact on story.
Shyju Khalid excelled in catching extraordinary frames where as Biji Bal’s music is average. Editing has been done so beautifully that frames move smoothly in front of our eyes.

What differentiates this film is the writer’s and director’s quick eye for picking the best scenes from ordinary situations and creating wit out it. Even then we doubt whether the second half is a bit slip off the way into traditional cinema writing.

Favourable

• Great writing and direction, wonderful performance, novelty, good cinematography, entertainment value.
Challenges
• Second half ordinary, BGM reminds you of former films of the director, climax lacks novelty.
With its simple and day-to-day life dialogues and situation, and the intrinsic humour and wit, Da Thadiya will remain in the talk of cinema viewers for sometime.

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