The so-called surprise welcomes that films like Ee Rojullo (which ended up doing more damage), Swamy Ra Ra, Uyyala Jampala and even the recent Karthikeya received weren’t because of any super-brilliant sparks that were on display. In fact, they never aimed much. They were no heroic statements and had nothing to lose. People went to the theatres with the cliché of ‘keeping their expectations low’ but came out of the halls with a smile. First-timer Anish Krishna’s Ala Ela too falls under a similar umbrella. Just about enough recognizable faces in the line-up and an intermittently assured director, we have a near-winner on the cards.
Ala Ela, for a fact has a Hrishikesh Mukherjee story executed in a Pyaar-Ka-Punchnama’ish tone. For every bit of ‘tradition’, we have some quality black-comedy episodes and gender-mocking adult humor in store. The introduction sequence of the film is perfectly indicative of the style the maker adopts and to a majority, doesn’t give up throughout the narrative.
The protagonist’s grandfather is about to die in a hospital here. He wants two of his last-wishes fulfilled prior to death. No, this isn’t a moment to sob, at least for Karthik, the confused grandson. In this scene with laughs aplenty, while the former performs his ‘duties’, the grandfather shouts and spills a custard-apple seed right off his mouth to show that he’s no more. We move on to the next scene right away. The spoon-feeding is literally on the face without flab.
There couldn’t have been many works in the recent-times that showed a director’s strengths and weaknesses as openly as Ala Ela. Knowing that Rahul Ravindran isn’t a man for far-fetched emotions, he lets him free with some painted moments. It’s probably Vennela Kishore, who seemed to be in his own-self and the film’s tone more than the other cast. Meanwhile, whenever, the film tries to harp back to add some ‘emotion’ or the namesake ‘subtlety’, such as the horribly staged thread of a HIV patient or the painful love triangle, its purpose is in ‘hibernation’ mode. These distractions are thankfully only in short spells.
Krishna Bhagwan’s voice-over undoes the actual good that the outing does and underlines this openly ‘male-friendly’ outing, claiming men to be the ‘head’ and women, the ‘neck’ of families. The clarity is appreciable, but why not just stick to the slick laughs and cut this deafening commentary?