Padakkalam movie review: A college supernatural flick that’s not the fantasy comedy it wants to be

Padakkalam movie review: It combines college life with supernatural elements as Jithin and friends suspect a professor's strange behavior.

Padakkalam Movie Review
Cast: Sandeep Pradeep, Suraj Venjaramoodu, Sharafudheen
Director: Manu Swaraj
Stars: ★★

Whenever a movie is set on a college campus with a group of friends and some professors as the key players, you can expect that there will be a lot of laughs, some action and perhaps, mystery as well. Padakkalam, helmed by debutant director Manu Swaraj, aims to be just that except that it is meshed with a supernatural element, a la Indiana Jones and the desi ‘parakaya pravesha’ (body swapping).

Padakkalam movie review: Despite engaging performances, particularly from Suraj Venjaramoodu and Sharafudheen, the film's weak writing and underdeveloped female characters hinder its overall impact.

What is the plot of Padakkalam

Jithin (Sandeep Pradeep) is in love with his engineering college classmate Jeevika (Niranjana Anoop) but she suddenly decides to break up with him citing personal differences. While a heartbroken Jithin is trying to brainstorm with his friends - Ramzad (Arun Pradeep), Kannan (Saaf) and Nakul (Arun Ajikumar) - on what do, a college strike is on with Jithin’s department demanding that their HOD be replaced as he got the job with fake documents.

Now, senior professor Shaji (Suraj Venjaramoodu) is eyeing the post as is a younger, student-friendly Renjith (Sharafudheen). Shaji gets elevated as HOD naturally as he is senior but Jithin and his friends discover something is amiss when Shaji starts behaving strangely and their suspicion falls on Renjith. They believe that Renjith has used some supernatural power and/or black magic to control Shaji and start to investigate this. They shockingly discover that he can control people through some means and are worried what his main objective is. And they get into a major issue. What has gone wrong? What does Renjith do? How does this situation get resolved?

What works and what doesn't

While the premise of the story - the supernatural and body swapping element - is interesting, the entire aspect of setting it in a college and using it in the context of a professor who eyes an HOD chair is extremely flimsy. The story is weak from the beginning and while the four students, Suraj Venjaramoodu and Sharafudheen have been used to elicit laughs using situations, mannerisms and dialogues, it’s only partly effective. It is the performances of Suraj Venjaramoodu and Sharafudheen (especially after the body swap occurs) that stand out and it is thanks to them that the movie keeps the audiences engaged for the most part. However, this is just not enough to make the movie totally fun ride. The female characters in the movie - Jeevika and Shaji’s wife (Pooja Mohanraj) - hardly have no major role to play and that’s unfortunate.

On the whole, Padakkalam is a decent attempt by director Manu Swaraj to give the audiences a clean campus supernatural fantasy comedy but it is the poor writing that lets down the film.