Prakashan Parakkatte movie review: Supposed coming-of-age saga in which the teen lead does not actually come of age

Language: Malayalam Prakashan’s son Dasan bunks school with his friend, flunks exams, loiters around town, falls in love with a local teen, woos and even stalks her, gets offended when his mother expresses exasperation at his lack of goals and resents his bright younger brother … until his carelessness causes an accident that has a life-altering impact on his family … after which we are expected to believe that he has changed dramatically because he says he has. But has he? The wanderings of an aimless teenager in the countryside have immense potential in the hands of capable storytellers. Director Shahad’s Prakashan Parakkatte (Let Prakashan Fly), however, appears as aimless as Dasan himself. The narrative flits from one episode to the next to the next in the protagonist’s journey, and while a handful are amusing or poignant, most are pointless and stale, and the film’s gender politics is troubling. It’s no surprise then that despite featuring some excellent actors, it fails to lift off. Nothing better illustrates Prakashan Parakkatte’s conceptual fuzziness than its title drawn from the father’s name although the film tells the son’s story_._

Situated in a luscious green rural Kerala setting, Prakashan Parakkatte stars  Mathew Thomas  as Dasan and  Dileesh Pothan  as his Dad. Although the poster implies that this is an ensemble film about a family of four, writer Dhyan Sreenivasan is either unable or unwilling to write women well because he gives the mother (played by  Nisha Sarang ) superficial treatment and even panders to prevailing social stereotypes by implying that she is a nag simply because she is concerned for her son’s future and worries that her husband is too tolerant of the boy’s lackadaisical attitude. The quartet is rounded off by debutant Ritunjay Sreejith – actor  Sreejith Ravi ’s son – playing Dasan’s sibling Akhil, a sometimes irritatingly precocious child. At first, as the film lays out its individual charming ingredients, it looks promising. Ever since his smashing debut in  Kumbalangi Nights , Mathew Thomas has displayed remarkable comic abilities and a confidence before the camera that belies his age. He was adorable as the joint lead in  Thanneermathan Dinangal , memorable in a cameo in  Anjaam Pathiraa , and hilarious in the midst of Jo and Jo’s inconsistency. The role in Prakashan Parakkatte is tailormade for him. Add to that Dileesh Pothan’s warmth, the striking location and Shahad’s naturalistic narrative style. The cornerstone of any film is its writing though, and this one’s script struggles to take off, held down as it is by its limited imagination among other factors. Like  Premam ,  Alphonse Puthren ’s blockbuster starring  Nivin Pauly , Prakashan Parakkatte too expects us to believe that the hero has come of age when in fact there is no particular evidence to prove that he has. In Premam, George persists with his inability to tell the difference between a crush vs love, infatuation vs depth of emotion, from adolescence to adulthood. Nevertheless, since he does what society describes as “settle down” by marrying a woman who reciprocates his feelings, the conclusion is that he has grown. George’s immaturity was mirrored by Dinesh (also played by Nivin), the leading man in Dhyan Sreenivasan’s directorial debut,  Love Action Drama .

Dasan in Prakashan Parakkatte is a child unlike Dinesh, and this film may cover a brief period in comparison with Premam, but Dasan too does not actually mature in that time. By the end of the film, he still does not invest as much as he should in his studies, he is still silly, but since he claims in the finale that he will do grand things, we are supposed to believe him. Dhyan’s approach to women in Love Action Drama was terrible. In Prakashan Parakkatte, not only is Dasan’s mother sparsely written, so is Neethu who the boy falls for. Malavika Manoj , the actor playing Neethu, is smart, but is stuck with a stereotypical ‘love interest’ template popular in commercial Indian cinema: a woman who rewards a man’s inexcusable conduct with affection and commitment. Dasan photographs her without her permission, she objects, soon after she is shown savouring his attention, and not much later, she tells him she likes him, thus cementing the widely held notion that women actually find sexual harassment flattering. So stuck is the script in a mindset where boy-girl friendships are inconceivable, that when little Akhil chats with girls his age, Dasan implies that he is a flirt and the subsequent conversation suggests that flirtation was indeed the tiny fellow’s goal. Huh? There is even a horrid ‘joke’ in Prakashan Parakkatte involving a teacher who molests his female students. And – here comes another dose of patriarchal clichés – Dasan, who had just then been misbehaving with Neethu, metamorphoses immediately into a gallant knight in shining armour determined to punish the teacher. Because his harassment is courtship, while the other guy’s harassment is harassment? When Dasan causes a calamity in the second half of Prakashan Parakkatte, Dileesh Pothan gets space to shine, but the writer’s conception of an understanding Dad is confused and confusing. Besides, the script fails to stitch that portion seamlessly into what precedes it and what follows, including the pseudo-philosophical mumbo-jumbo stuffed into the end. When the characters in a film do not get credible graphs, and the narrative has an episodic feel, how long can good actors sustain it? Prakashan Parakkatte is occasionally pleasant, visually pretty but mostly it’s a wannabe that does not have the chops to be what it wants to be. Rating: 1.75 (out of 5 stars)  Prakashan Parakkatte is now in theatres

Anna M.M. Vetticad is an award-winning journalist and author of The Adventures of an Intrepid Film Critic. She specialises in the intersection of cinema with feminist and other socio-political concerns. Twitter: @annavetticad, Instagram: @annammvetticad, Facebook: AnnaMMVetticadOfficial Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News ,  India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook ,  Twitter  and  Instagram .