Beautiful location, best ever camerawork, outstanding art direction, sweet youthful music and an all new star cast.... but ….?
“Note Book”
Language: Malayalam
Director: Roshan Andrews
Writer duo: Boby – Sanjay
Music Director: Mejo Joseph
Cinematographer: Divakar
Art Director: Sunil Babu
Producer : P.V. Gangadharan
Cast : Roma, Maria, Parvati, Sooraj, Mejo Joseph, Raveendran, Prem Prakash, Sukanya, Aishwarya and Suresh Gopi
Plot:
Saira Elizabeth (Roma), Sreedevi (Maria) and Pooja (Parvati) are 12th standard students and intimate friends at The Lords Academy in Ooty. One funny incident get Sreedevi and Sooraj Menon (Sooraj) closer than mere classmates. Things go wrong on a study tour as both make love. Later they discover that Sreedevi is pregnant.
Saira wants to inform Sreedevi’s parents about the whole affair. But Sreedevi is afraid and she stops Saira from doing it. Instead they plan for an abortion. They choose the founder’s day for escaping from the school and to consult a doctor.
After much inhibition and interrogation, the doctor agrees to do the abortion. But the worst happens. Sreedevi dies. What happens to the two girls Saira and Pooja forms the rest of the movie.
Script and Direction :
The Boby-Sanjay duo had a promising start with some award winning screenplays for big and small screens some years ago but Note Book is certainly not their best. They conceived a much different story and premises but failed to fill it with nice incidents to develop the story. Instead they resorted to an amateurish approach to somehow tell the story. This is evident in the post interval part, especially after the two girls return to the school after the death of their friend. Everything is predictable after this.
Director Roshan Andrews has tried hard to extract the best out of the new comers. Cheers to him !
Pluses:
There are some good messages to the parents and teachers like how much harm can be caused by the teenagers’ fear towards their parents. The presentiments of teachers about their students is also shown effectively. The character played by the film’s young music director (!) Mejo Joseph will stay in any teacher’s mind. He is poor in studies but is a budding musician. On his father’s promise of buying a piano, he performs well in the exams and the teachers suspect him for having done malpractice. He fails to prove his innocence on the terrorized interrogation session by the principal and he gets dismissed.All the new comers have delivered outstanding acting performances. But Roma is the best. Her performance as Saira will linger in the viewers’ minds for a long time. The surprise package is Suresh Gopi. He plays the father to Saira. He comes to the school to take her home. His performance is outstanding.The cinematography is the best ever for a Malayalam movie. Each frame is like a picture post card. The art direction is also one of the finest ever. Mejo Joseph’s cool youthful music is sure to hit the charts. It is unbelievable that Note Book is his first movie. The songs “changaatikkoottam” and “hridayavum” are the best of the bunch.
Minuses:
As said earlier, the post interval portions are written in hurry and they look like mere rituals to end the event. The climax is somewhat forced and the reunion of the two friends is not convincing.
So…..
don’t go with high expectations. The movie won’t satisfy you in the end. But as the current scenario is concerned, Malayalam cinema definitely needs such refreshing experiments. For the last ten years, Malayalam cinema ignored many characters like students, teachers, schools….. And even men below 40 years of age!
For an industry which tells only stories about chronic bachelors, a film like Note Book is a refreshing change for sure.