 I see you've bought some industrial strength Velcro. That was for the foam on the walls. That was for you and my mom. Velcro? She told me. Hi, welcome back to our Stupider Exits of Corbin. Keep it ginky kids. And you can follow us on Instagram, Twitter! From all juicy content. How are things on the twid? That's a little personal. You want to know that about your mother? Not really. And you can follow us on Instagram, Twitter! For more juicy content, you can follow us on Instagram, Twitter! Because it helps the algorithm. Algorithm. Algorithm. Definition helps us. And today we're doing a movie review. Your little shitlets. Anybody else do that with me? Because if you do, you're awesome. Absolutely nobody. There's one person in Hyderabad. In fact, after I say a movie review, and they were like, ooh, let me skip the next point however long it takes you. How long does it do it? Do it. 0.5 seconds. 1.5. Probably 1.5. Do it again. Does this really matter? I just wanted to draw it out. Anyways, today we're doing a movie review of the 2022 film, Malayalam film, I think that's close enough for hand grenades. How would you say it? Just like that. Well, I wouldn't say it exactly like that, but the pronunciation. How would you say it? Makhundanani. Makhundanani. Yeah, Makhundanani. I think you got it exactly the way it's supposed to be pronounced. Makhundanani just associates. Just slow it down a little bit. Directed by, forgive mispronunciations, Abhanav Sunder Nayak. And he wrote it as well along with Vimal Gopalkrishnan. And then starring Vinith Srinivasan. And Sura, who we've seen quite a bit of. Absolutely. Him, I don't think we've ever seen him before. The lead I didn't recognize. Oh, no, no, Priyam. Priyam, no, we saw that. It was the butterfly one that we didn't like as much. I don't remember what he was. And I don't remember that either, because that was a while ago. I think it was beginning of last year. I think it was when it was. But anyways, obviously this came out last year. So we're going to do a hundred percent spoiler review, since it's not new technically, even though I didn't hear about this when it came out last year. So it would be a hundred percent spoiler review. If you haven't watched it, please go watch it. Come back and Rick, your initial thoughts, please. Yeah, and we watched it on Hulu. Hulu. Of all places, not a very common platform for us to watch stuff here. It's because it's on Disney Plus Hot Star, which isn't available in America, because that would take away from Hulu and Disney Plus. Right. And so this time they've put, they've took, since they take that platform away, they put it on their other platform, which is Hulu. Yeah. So we are going to obviously have a lot to talk about, like we usually do. I loved this. I have a lot to say about this that I like. I think it's also a far more intelligent film than face value gives. I think there's a lot of people who can walk away from this and think, wow, that was funny. It was also pretty damning in a beautiful way. And I'll share more about that as we get into it. But I just from the beginning all the way through, I loved its weirdness. I loved its message. I loved its lead. And it was one of the one of the more fun movies. And I needed that because I've been watching some films recently that are nominated for the SAGs and nominated for Oscars. And there's a couple that have gotten nominations that just, so it was nice to be, breathe life artistically back into me. Um, I hated this movie. I'm kidding. I knew that couldn't be true. It's strange credulity. I knew it couldn't be true. No, actually, in fact, if I had seen this film last year, it would have been easily in my top five of the year last year. I won't argue. I mean, I haven't dealt into what my list last year and putting this in it, but I can already just say, I was like, this is my kind of movie. I love this movie. And I know this movie has gotten a lot of parallels and I think it is inspired. I don't know if you ever saw this film, The Sound of Silence. That's a song, not a movie. Is it Night Walker or with Jake Gyllenhaal? Do you ever see it? I've seen that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, no. It's very different, but it's inspired by, because it's essentially a guy who, in that one, obviously took advantage of people in taking pictures and not helping them and kind of to get up in the ranks. And so it is similar in that aspect. That would be the only similarity. Um, but obviously, I think this one did a lot of cool things. And I also heard that one of the things I loved was the inner monologue he was giving. Loved it. I loved that choice, but apparently it was only a choice in post. It was not initially intended. It wasn't originally scripted. It was supposed to just be silent a lot of time. And I think that added so much character and corkiness and also just, it also helped you, even though this guy's a narcissist, dick, awful person, it kind of helped you kind of freak and sociopath. It helped you kind of almost relate to him at times, which is great. Obviously, you love to do it even with a terrible, and it tells you right off the bat with this film that there's people that, a lot of people are gray. Yeah. And then some people are just black. And that sets you up for exactly what this one was doing. I'm genuinely shocked that something that works so well and to me is so critically important to the goodness of this movie, which is the narration, was not intended from the get-go. Yeah. Well, that really surprises me. If it's not true, let me know. But that's one of the things I heard somebody say, in which I was like, oh my word, that would have changed. I mean, I think it probably would have been a good, but it would have been totally different. I'll give you one moment. That's one of my favorite moments among many that are just like this. He's sitting there and he looks and the guy walks in and he says a few things about him and then the final thing he says after he rattles off a couple of things, he goes, oh my God, hair jail. Freaking hysteric. Oh, it's very funny. There were so many moments like that with the narration that were just brilliant. Yeah. It's one of those things that it's not used often. And sometimes I don't like it because I think it's a cop-out as well, like the inner monologue sometimes when it's not used. It's an easy way to get expositioned. It could kind of be like two years later or kind of that kind of stuff that I'm not a huge fan of. Right. But when it's done like this in a black comedy, I just, I think it worked so well. Like so many, I laughed out loud so many times. So did I. Many times I was trying not to wake up and drawn because I watched it early enough that it could have and I was really holding in my life. Like she breaks a boring predictable. And then like later in the film he's like, suicide. I'm going to kill myself. Yeah. The narration parts for me were at the top of my list of favorite parts. On top of his performance along with those, the fact that he was straight faced most of the times, it wasn't like he was playing to the shtick, which may be why it worked because he didn't know there was going to be narration over him. He reminded me of, and I, this is- You know, I'm talking about Vin... Yeah, our lead. Yeah. He reminded me of, and this is the highest, highest compliment because anybody who knows the actor I'm about to name knows the work ethic, knows the comedic genius. He reminded me a lot of Peter Sellers. Yeah. A lot. If someone would have said to me, okay, I want to do the Indian pink panther, he'd be at the top of my list to play in specter Cluzo. Mm-hmm. Top of my list. Especially, I think Mali Alam, maybe they have done it, but Mali Alam is so, I say it all the time, so creative and intelligent. And also, they don't, they're not following, I mean, obviously, I think they have commercial films. I think Mahmoudi or Mohanlal has big commercial films coming out along with their smaller independent films, not Mahmoudi, I meant Mohanlal. But a lot of times, they're just like, this is what we do, and our people support our cinema. Thank God. Truly. Because they really dance to the beat of their own drum, which is, it's wonderful, because no other industry does what they do so consistently. No. And just like, I want to have a creative story with really good acting. There's enough evidence, there's enough evidence that we've seen over the years that make it really clear that Mali Alam films have a priority. Story, and that includes the script, story, acting, and then just putting it all together in a way that is extraordinarily original. Yeah. And it's wonderful. And hats off to the director, say his name again, please. There were so many creative choices in this film that I loved, obviously the lead's performance, but there was so many, like just really off the bat. I loved every animation that came on screen. And it started with the, you know, every film, especially Mali Alam, has the no smoking stuff going on, right? And it started off with this fun animation, like thank you for making it fun, because I hate that stupid shit that they put in this thing. But then like, the animals were harmed. Yeah, they bring it back so many times, so like narrate what he's thinking of doing as well. And it's so, it's just stick figures, or it's a stick figure with his face on it. The story about killing his grandpa. It's just, it's, this film is so quirky and well blended together. Absolutely. Uniqueness of telling this story. It made it so enjoyable for me that I literally just wanted to end it. I was like, that was so fun. I really love that. And one of my favorite things of the story, aside from the humor and the things we've just stated, were the very real, dark reality of corruption at every level, most especially in the medical world. Yeah, but Corbin would know about this, but y'all wouldn't know about this. But it's a great time to talk about it, so I can say this to the medical community in America. My dad has, I've been going through living hell since June 25th with the medical community and Medicaid and Medicare and the, I can tell you from personal experience, I didn't need this. I already knew this about the American health system, and it's not just the American health system, it's anywhere people can profit off of other people's sickness, whether it's their moral sickness or their physical sickness or their economic sickness. There will always be assholes ready to make money off of it and ready to make you jump through hoops. And there was an extra sense of stinging glory that I loved about this movie, because it ridicules and mocks the insanity and the evilness and the sinfulness of anybody in the medical world, the political world, the insurance world, the criminal world, the legal world, who prioritizes personal ambition over brotherly love, who prioritizes subjective rationalization versus objective truth, and who looks at human suffering as an opportunity to profit. That's my favorite takeaway, because this has got the funniness of a pink panther. But it's got the F-U to the powers that be of you name it. It is an F-U. Yeah. And it's the way it handled the situation of him, just your lead, which is one of the things a little bit, Molly, I'm assuming. They don't care that like the Indian society a lot of times doesn't like their hero to be a bad guy or gray at all. Right. He needs to be upstanding Indian. Right. Jai Hind. Right. All the time. But they just don't care. Then our lead is a sociopath scumbag asshole who literally takes advantage of people and kills people for his betterment of himself. There's nothing wrong, and there will always be a place for the legends that are the heroes of myth, right? But give me human beings. Yeah. Which is human beings. That's one of my favorite lines is a throw away. There's so many little throw away little lines that he gives that have so much meaning. And one of them was he does something and he says to us, assuming we agree, that's the right thing to do. Yep. He's convinced himself and it isn't. It's heinous. I also loved the subtle but not so subtle use of snake because the universal symbol for the medical world is the two serpents going up the pole. That is the universal symbol for medicine and the use of snake in this and the multiple meanings of that, not just for the representation of the medical community, but the snakes within it I thought was freaking brilliant. And I also, one of my favorite lines, he sees Suraj again after he's dead. He goes, man, even in a Huluksu nation, he's an idiot. Oh, him as well. Suraj, when he's a phenomenal actor, we've seen him with so many things. He's a really, really good actor. Love seeing him. But I love also what they did with his character in this, the fact that obviously he was kind of such an impassive. And then obviously he turned and he was like, okay, now I'm going to kill him. He dies. But then they bring him back as this like, almost moral conscience. Almost like the angel or devil on his shoulder. Are you really going to do this? Normally it would be like his conscience, but it's just the guy he killed. But he's not helpful in his eyes. One of my favorite things among many with Malayalam cinema is they'll do anything. And I really had no, I thought the movie was over. It was? It died? Yep. Oh, really? Yeah, I hadn't looked at the time signature at all. So when he died, I thought, that's freaking great. And then it kept going and I thought, that's freaking great. And there's no way to predict where it's going to go. No. And another thing I want to like, another brilliant aspect of the writing is, and what it talks about is, you know, there's a lot of people in every industry, of whether it's film industry, or that choose the, I don't want to say wrong path is the correct term, but they choose a shortcut path to get where they want to go. Right. And that's obviously a big message in there. Absolutely. And use people. He couldn't be a regular lawyer. Right, because he couldn't handle it. So he found a shortcut. All's fair in love and war. And that was his entire, and I love the fact that he was just every single turn. He couldn't handle anybody getting anything better than him. When he was getting married to this beautiful woman, he found out there's other guy was marrying somebody who had a better profession. Yeah, he was like, this cannot stand. The bottom line for this guy is, success, meaning the money and the fame and the power, is a inherent moral good. Just get the success. And our character does not have any arc. He goes through no change. He ends exactly the way as he started, and he's actually worse because he was rewarded for doing the crap he did. Yeah. Freaking good. You know, the women in this were great. His, I recognize her. Yeah, by the way, in many times, she's got that Disney princess Sridevi. What was her name? Eyes aspect. Her eyes are so expressive and large and beautiful on film. What was her name? Her character's name? Yeah. I can't see it on IMDb. Is it this? No. Well, pull up her picture. You can't miss those eyes. It's not here. If there's no... I think it was her. Manakshi? I think that was... So if it's... Was that... Wait, or was it the other character? No, that was his girlfriend, Advocate Jyothi. It was the other one, and there's no picture for her. And she was great too. Tanvi Ram. I really enjoyed her performance as did I. The girlfriend, I thought was... I think, yeah. I like that. Arsha Baiju? And she was like, I don't want to work. I just want to sit down all day and relax. They're perfect for each other. They really were... Let me see if that's her. Yeah, that's absolutely her. Why did you have a picture on IMDb? She doesn't need one. She looks familiar, though, doesn't she? Well, she very much has... In certain angles, there were points. She reminded me of a combination of... Shredevia. Shredevia, and who is the actress that did Briani? Oh, I don't know. I forget her name. Reminded me a little bit of her too. Gotcha. I also loved, before I forget, there's one time he's telling us about a couple things he wants to do, and he says number one and number two. Number one, the guy's peeing, and then number two, he's sitting on the toilet, and as I said, number two, in addition to the visual, you get... I remember that. It's so good. Yeah, the... And Brani would love this movie. For its intelligence, especially. Yeah, everything about it. And I remember last year, when I said it's... Normally, Malialum always comes out with my favorite film of the year. It was pretty... And last year, there was some in there, like Fafa's film was in there, but it didn't win. If this came out, I probably could have talked myself into it being my favorite or one of my top two, three favorites. It would have definitely been in my top five, probably. I don't know what I would have replaced, but it's a wonderful movie. Because it's just so intelligent. And I also loved the quirky score, the composition by C.B.... Great score. C.B. Matthew Alex. Great score. It's very quirky. Crazy quirky. It gave it, even though a lot of evil stuff is going on, it gave it this light-hearted feel, which adds to the sociopathness. Exactly the way the score... They're totally different scores, but it works as well as the score in Napoleon Dynamite works. Where the music is so central to what's going on that, if you were to hear the music, you will be instantly in the movie again. If I heard any of that score again, I would immediately feel like I'm in the film again. Yeah. Yeah. Do we talk about everything we wanted to talk about? Yeah. And it goes without saying, some of the technical aspects in a film like this can easily be overlooked. A huge contributor to the flow of this film is the editing. Yes. That's off to the editor, which is... The editing choices and the flow of the film... Oh, the director was one of the editors. This is a really, really good example. You'll hear us talk about films and how a film probably could have been trimmed. There's no fat on this thing. There is zero fat. I wouldn't change a frame of film or a page of script. Yeah. No fat on it. I loved all the dynamics in the film of him with the doctor guy and then him with the police officers. And then everything. I love the whole element of when he was ready to kill himself. It's such a matter of a fact. Because obviously his whole thing was... It's better to die than to fail. To die and rot than fail. So I didn't succeed. I might as well die. And I love... He's like, you have to get like seven pills. We'll do it. Oh, you can only get two. And I love... Suraj appears. He sits on the thing. He's ready to die and Suraj shows up. He goes, why are you going to kill all these innocent people too? And then again. Oh, it was so good. I would go home and watch this again today with Andrani in a heartbeat. Yeah. Such an enjoyable movie. Absolutely. Phenomenal film. Great job to everybody involved. Especially the director, obviously. Say his name. Abinav Sundar Nayak. Fantastic job. Fantastic. Just Malayalam industry. Man, just everybody keep doing what you're doing. And I'm believing in that you guys are getting the audience. And I just... Hats off. I know this one didn't come out this year, but my two favorite films that I've watched this year so far are two Malayalam films. Your favorites of the year? Of India. Yeah. Even though this one didn't come out this year, I'm saying. Yeah. The stuff that we've seen in 2023 was... LJP's film, which is another extremely intelligent film. And then this one, even though it didn't come out this year. Because I didn't even hear about this last year, which is... And I'm sure some of you told us in the comments, but obviously we get hundreds of comments and each thing and it's hard to keep up, especially with small... And I'm betting, I bet you, we did not get this here in terms of... In theaters. In theaters. Yeah. I bet we did not. Because we barely got LJP's film. And I think we got LJP because he's reached a level, particularly with what the buzz came with Jellikatu. He's got a name recognition that justifies distribution. Yeah. Anyways, so let us know what you thought about this film and what should be our next Malayalam film that we should watch. Please let us know down below.