Pluto Movie Review:
Science fiction comedies often thrive on unlikely friendships. In Adithyan Chandrashekar's Pluto, that friendship is between a directionless Malayali youth and an alien who turns out to be just as much of a failure on his own planet. It is an amusing setup, though the screenplay never quite lives up to its own premise.
Director: Adithyan Chandrashekar
Cast: Neeraj Madhav, Althaf Salim, Aarsha Chandini Baiju, Aju Varghese, Subin SB, Dinesh Prabhakar, Vineeth Thattil David, Nihal Nizam
Vicky (Neeraj Madhav) is well into his thirties and still chasing one failed business idea after another, financially dependent on his girlfriend Meera (Aarsha Chandini Baiju) to keep him afloat. His fortunes seem to change when he stumbles upon a stranded alien he names Pluto (Althaf Salim), hoping the extraterrestrial's powers might finally turn his life around. Instead, he finds someone every bit as directionless as himself, an alien who failed his own exams back home. Before long, the pair are drawn into a fight against people wanting to capture Pluto for their own gains, chief among them Thampi (Aju Varghese), a local big shot running an illegal cross-breeding racket who smells profit the moment he learns an alien is involved.
Malayalam cinema last ventured into similar territory in 2024 with Gaganachari, in which a group of misfits helped a stranded alien find her way home. Indian cinema has also explored comparable ideas through Bollywood films Koi... Mil Gaya and PK in the past. What sets Pluto apart is making its extraterrestrial another underachiever rather than an all-knowing visitor, a smart touch that stays more interesting on paper than in practice. The film keeps insisting that Vicky and Pluto are kindred spirits, yet their friendship never develops into the emotional core it needs.
That underdevelopment shows early. The first hour spends too long circling Vicky's repeated failures before the story settles into its central conflict, and the comedy fares no better, reaching for laughs but landing only a handful of them. A scene where Thampi tries threatening Meera while struggling through an unbearably spicy packet of chips is genuinely funny, while Pluto's attempts to navigate Malayalam, bouncing between formal textbook diction and Gen Z slang, provide another welcome spark. Beyond these scattered moments, much of the humour feels laboured.
Pluto also carries faint echoes of Sharaf U Dheen's The Pet Detective, centring on a directionless protagonist searching for purpose, supported by a financially independent girlfriend whose patience seems endless, with even a small subplot involving animals adding to the familiarity. In many ways, Pluto plays like Gaganachari meeting The Pet Detective, only without the sense of fun that helped both films overcome their own shortcomings.
The second hour is comparatively engaging, largely because the science fiction ideas finally take centre stage. One interesting, if familiar, narrative device introduced later gives the climax a sense of momentum without feeling like a random gimmick, a smart addition that deserved a stronger film around it. By then, though, the film has already burned through too much goodwill for the payoff to carry real weight. Whether Pluto returns home or whether Vicky finally finds redemption never becomes as compelling as it intends.
Underlying all this is a tonal uncertainty the film never quite overcomes. At times, it feels like a playful spoof of the familiar E.T.-style adventure where kind-hearted humans protect a harmless alien from villains and government agencies. At other times, it expects those very same beats to be taken completely seriously. Thampi's exaggerated characterisation, complete with a bumbling henchman and an eccentric scientist, only adds to that confusion, leaving the film unsure whether it wants to parody the genre or wholeheartedly embrace it.
Technically, the comic book-inspired editing by Sanath Sivaraj lends a few sequences an energetic rhythm, but it isn't enough to compensate for Niyas Muhammed's largely unimaginative screenplay, which rarely capitalises on its own best ideas. Neeraj Madhav delivers a serviceable performance as Vicky, while Althaf Salim suits the alien's eccentricity without leaving much of an impression. Aarsha Chandini Baiju has little to do beyond playing the supportive girlfriend, making Meera feel more functional than memorable.
At just over two hours, Pluto is never outright tedious, even if much of it feels underwhelming. There are flashes of imagination and the occasional laugh, but they are never enough to make the film linger. Ironically, for a story about two people trying to prove they are more than failures, the film ends up leaving very little behind once it's over.
