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There is a funny action block in the last 15 minutes of the latest Sharaf U Dheen starrer, The Pet Detective, which is extremely hilarious because of its pacing and the kind of physical comedy we see in that part of the film. In a way, the intention of the movie is to give a buildup to that moment by showing various parallel tracks in the rest of the movie. The idea of the film is to build a chaotic comedy wth eccentric characters. Even though the placement of many of the twists and turns feels too convenient, they are able to make the final act a fun experience, making the whole movie in totality a passable, fun ride.
Tony Jose Alula is the son of Jose Alula. Jose Alula used to be a detective in Mexico. He had to leave Mexico and come to Kerala because of a gangster named Sambai. Years later, his son has taken over the office, and it wasn’t a profitable venture for him. In the midst of this dry run, Tony hits a jackpot when he manages to find a missing pet dog of his girlfriend’s neighbor. How that event eventually changes his whole world is what we see in The Pet Detective.
In terms of genre, this one also falls in the multiple-track chaos comedy, and we had a similar comedy in the form of Sahasam this year. In the movie’s promos, they mentioned that the aspiration is to make something like a CID Moosa, as we haven’t really seen a slapstick comedy of that sort in a long time. When you look at the writing, in some areas, we can see similar beats. If the rivalry between Moosa and the police had a family connection, here it is love. That police vs detective competition element is also there in this film. The issue in the initial portion of the film is the duration of certain sequences. The pre-interval fight sequence featuring Sharaf U Dheen and Anupama Parameshwaran is definitely funny. But since it isn’t that “necessary” for the plot, it felt like that sequence was taking up a lot of space, and the interval card popping up right after that, without much of a conflict in the Story, also felt a bit jarring.
Sharaf U Dheen is actually flexing all his muscles that he has sort of proven over a decade in the industry, the most obvious one being humor. The kind of counter dialogue banter comedy we get to see in this movie featuring him is really funny, especially his combination scenes with Joemon. The movie even offers him spaces to show off his hero swagger, and since the percentage of that was relatively minimal, it sort of enhanced the aura of the character. Anupama Parameshwaran gets a pretty extensive role as the female lead of the movie. Her character, Kaikeyi, is involved in the whole process, and she was fine in performing the comedic bits. Joemon Jyothir, on paper, is the character who is there to increase the comedy quotient of the film. But he manages to make that character a lot more memorable with his signature performance style. Vinay Forrt as Rajath Menon is actually the Jagathy equivalent in CID Moosa. But I felt the scattered appearances of that character made it less memorable. Vijayaraghavan and Renji Panicker get these peculiar characters, which weren’t necessarily acting challenges. There are a whole lot of actors in this movie, including Vinayakan, Shyam Mohan, Praseetha, Nishanth Sagar, Bhagath Manuel, etc. However, they all had very minimal parts in the film.
Written and directed by Praneesh Vijayan, The Pet Detective has no unique aspirations. Just like Sahasam, it is also building these parallel narratives, and in the end, we see all those tracks crossing paths. At times, especially in the initial portions, the movie lingers on minimal elements for a bit too long. And there are these subplots in the film featuring a psychopath, then a few smugglers, etc., which all kind of get ignored after getting set up enticingly. One of the things that made CID Moosa superbly entertaining was the way events flowed from one to another, making it almost easy for us to narrate the Story to someone. In the case of The Pet Detective, the film takes a considerable time to reach that flow of things, and once it cracks that, the humor happens very naturally. The visual style and lensing are done in a way to enhance that heightened comedy tone of the Story. The music from Rajesh Murugesan is also getting used mostly as a theme to take the events forward.
Clocking under two hours, The Pet Detective is trying to be a zippy madcap ride, and to an extent, it manages to be what it promised. Rather than predictability, I would say there is a familiarity in certain characterizations that made it less original and more inspired. When Vinay Forrt’s character appears in the last act of the movie, we have almost forgotten about that character, and you can’t say the same about Jagathy Sreekumar’s character from CID Moosa. The humor in the final act and the performances of the main actors are so good that The Pet Detective ultimately manages to make us forget or forgive all its writing flaws.
Review By: Digitpatrox