Bro daddy – movie review

A title that couldn’t have been any more straight forward. It reminds me of a movie titled “Oru kolai iru kangal” released decades ago. The only reason I remember that movie, even though I hadn’t seen it till now is its title. For a supposedly thriller genre story, you couldn’t have a more revealing title!!. Bro Daddy, brings together the combo of Prithviraj and Mohanlal, in yet another directorial venture of the former. The cast also brings together Meena with Mohanlal, the Drishyam couple who couldn’t be paired for a more different role, kaniha and Kalyani Priyadarshan whose elusive search for an establishing hit still continues across Molly/Kollywoods. Prithviraj and Kalyani are kids of two friendly families and for some reason, keeps their relationship a secret, despite possibly no chance of any approval concern. They also have a live-in relationship in Bangalore which leads to accidental pregnancy!!! If at all there could’ve been an accident more planned, this would be it!! While caught by apparent shock of the news(!!) and wondering how to reveal the same to both their families, Prithvi gets a call back home where his dad proudly informs him about the new arrival at their house. Till this point, I thought the movie was a remake of “Badhaai ho”, hindi movie with similar theme. While the hindi version was down right funny in dealing with such a situation amidst peer and social pressures, the mallu version, takes diversion and focuses mainly on getting the lead pair married as its central theme, hiding the news of pregnancy of both Kalyani and Meena from the formers dad. In fact, after watching both the movies, it feels like the hindi version was more Malayalam in its treatment and vice versa. The genuineness of the situations, the funny anecdotes, the ease with which melodramatic situations are handled, the pressure and embarrassing scenarios faced by Neena Gupta, while the dad guy beaming with pride, becoming the masculinity mascot of his friends was coolly made. In fact, considering the delayed marriages and so many societal changes that has made late pregnancies and decades of gap between two children a common norm, the theme had a minefields of situations to exploit and to be honest I thought the mallu version would be more comical than the hindi one. Not that the movie was bad, in fact, as mentioned on one of the press meets, this one is definitely light hearted and looks easy on the eye. The casting is top notch and Mohanlal does a neat version of himself, with a twinkle in his eye when he proudly announces the pregnancy to his first son, Meena and kaniha have their roles cut out for them. Kalyani looks cute as expected and the entire cast with the locales bring a richness to the setup that is more common for Bollywood than Mallu. The scenes where he is torn between revealing his news while getting the “thunder” stole by his dad, Prithvi does a neat comic repeat of his “Mozhi” performance. It could’ve been more funnier with more focus on the parents pregnancy rather than the latter. Hope they make it in tamil with similar stellar casting, including Kamal, Sivakarthikeyan and crew.