Innale Vare Movie Review: An endurance-testing experience

Innale Vare Movie Review: An endurance-testing experience

It is a film where everyone seems to be competing at overacting
Rating:(2 / 5)

Maybe this is the first time that I managed to find something relatable in a very unlikeable character. But, hey, you learn something new every day. Asif Ali's character in Jis Joy's Innale Vare is a movie star who gets trapped inside the room of an apartment for a long time. I could empathise with his plight because watching this film gave me a similar feeling. I felt trapped because I had to review a feature starring three of Malayalam cinema's most well-known -- two of them happen to be my favourites -- faces. But an hour into it, I regretted getting on what can be described simply as a bad trip. Asif's Adhi Sankar is a stubborn and egotistical movie star who often behaves like Nicolas Cage in most of his Hollywood movies. So when Adhi ends up in the above predicament and starts acting like Nic Cage on acid, one's first reaction is: Well, he deserved it.

Director: Jis Joy

Cast: Asif Ali, Nimisha Sajayan, Antony Varghese

Rating: 2/5

Streaming on: SonyLIV

Innale Vare ails from the same problem that Tamil superstar Vijay's last film Beast had: It seemed confused about which genre it wanted to follow.. I couldn't tell whether it was a comedy or a thriller. Jis Joy's first foray into thriller territory certainly has the 'look' of one, meaning it has a colour tone that's straight out of the Matrix films or anything from David Fincher. However, some areas triggered a laugh response from my end. It's not because the characters said something funny, but their behaviour often struck me as unintentionally hilarious.

There are two -- maybe three -- good ideas in the film, but when the material runs for close to 140 minutes, those few inspiring stretches feel overshadowed by everything that preceded or succeeded them. The best one is, of course, the idea of pitting professional actors against ordinary folks who can 'act'. There is a kidnapping, and there is a motive. But once the latter is revealed, it dims the effect of every event that led up to it. It also reminds one that this is a Jis Joy film! The film's biggest problem is putting an extremely unlikeable protagonist in a situation that takes him to his wits' end. But how does one care what happens to a man with no principles? And when his ordeal lasts longer than one can endure, one stops caring.

Innale Vare would've been more interesting had it tried something slightly different with its premise. I recall a film that did this well: David Fincher's The Game, in which Michael Douglas' played a corporate bigshot subjected to a rollercoaster after he opts to play an adventurous and potentially life-threatening 'game' to make his life more colourful. Douglas goes through numerous humiliating situations, and the film eventually reaches a point where he comes down to the level of a bum. Adhi, too, has to endure a similar level of humiliation and given his high degree of ego, it would take a long while to put some sense into him. But it also means Asif going over the top, which is a patience-testing experience.

Nimisha Sajayan gets the film's most interesting character, but one that's not without flaws -- missteps that applies equally to Asif's character. Her best scene is easily her introduction scene. Oddly enough, that's also Asif's best moment in the film. When Nimisha meets Asif when the latter is in the middle of a high-pressure moment, her presence makes things much more complicated. The way she moved around him and his reactions in that scene were hilarious -- and I don't mean the unintentional kind. But more than Asif, it's the woman who asked him to get something from the pharmacy that I felt bad for. Don't get me started on how that woman made the request. Now that's what you call unintentionally hilarious! And I'm still trying to figure out what Antony Varghese's character did here. 99% of the time, he communicates like an android who, by the way, has superhuman audio manipulating skills. (Hey, maybe there's an idea for a superhero movie.)

To keep a long story short, this is a film where everyone seems to be competing at overacting. My final alternate takeaway from the film? It's about a guy who takes a long time to decide whether he should act in a toilet cleaner ad or not.

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