 You're all kinds of festive today. Yep. What was that? Go back to our stupid reaction to the Corbin. I'm Rick. And follow us on Instagram, Twitter, juicy content. Thanks to some Patreon followers to the account. We're going to be able to get a squad bang! Bang! Follow us on personal YouTube channels. Links are down below. And you're probably like, why are you guys on Skype? I'm not feeling well. And I don't feel terrible. But my wife was sick. Now I'm feeling a little under the weather. I don't think it's COVID. We've taken like three COVID tests already. And they're all negative. But out of abundance of caution, even still, if you just had a cold, I'm sure Rick doesn't want to catch a cold either, so we're going crazy. We're just being extra careful as you should be. Just be extra safe, guys. But I'm pretty sure I'm waxed and waxed, so I should be fine. But today, in case none of you have been yelling at us for it, we are doing a review for the new Malialum film, a 2021 film that came out, I believe it was on Christmas Day, actually. Hence my Christmas lights. It actually had Santa, too. So it's just as much of a Christmas movie as Die Hard. Vinal Murali, directed by Basil Joseph, who we've seen, I believe, his acting stuff. I don't think we've ever seen anything he's directed, starring Tavino Thomas, who we've seen in, I believe, was Kala earlier in the year. And then also Guru, I can't say that last name, he plays the villain, essentially, in the film. He's the antagonist. And a whole bunch of other people, but those are the main two stars in it. Since it's new, and it's on Netflix, so if you'd like to go watch it, go watch it. This is going to be a non-spoiler first, and then we'll get into some spoilers. This is India's first, not India, sorry, Malialum's first ever superhero film. And I don't even know if that's fair. I would actually call it a Malialum film that happens to have superpowers, more than a overall superhero film, because I'm sure you got them as well. A ton of messages about this film, and how it was, which I got so many messages that it's one of the benefits of following us on Instagram and Twitter is that you get insider information. So I let stupid babies know on Instagram and my story, I sent a poster of it and put on there, watching it right now, review coming, because I was getting so many messages about watch it, watch it, watch it. So I just wanted everybody to know, you can stop bombarding me now. And we do know that obviously the budget was about 2.5 million US dollars. And obviously, if you're comparing that to a Marvel film, that's the pennies, obviously. So we knew that- I think that's their crap services budget. Yeah, obviously. So we knew that going into it, that it wasn't going to be a massive big budget Spider-Man style of film. But we saw a couple trailers, couple teasers. We were very, very excited for it. So first non-spoiler, then we'll get into some spoils. Rick, your first initial non-spoiler thoughts, please. I have a paragraph. Okay, cool. Yeah. So I wrote in a superhero world that has been dominated by the gold standard of the Marvel Universe for over a decade now. It takes people who are either crazy, audaciously bold or both to try and make a superhero movie today, especially when the region and industry they come from has never made a superhero movie before now. It's kind of like thinking a kid who's only played Gully Cricket can just step in one day as a substitute for Virat Kohli and play as well. Well, well, Holy Holy Six is Batman. The Mali alum kids have shown up to play while it certainly does lack in some acting and technical expertise. Mental Morali makes up for it and sheer will originality and above all heart. I love this movie and I'll have a lot more to say as we dissect it all here. But to me, this movie should absolutely become a franchise. And it's a great example of how a movie can miss the mark in a few places, but still completely win your heart. That's one of your better paragraphs, Rick. I feel well, thank you. I like the Virat Kohli reference there. Well, it's like that. I mean, if you're making a superhero movie, everybody on the planet is going to compare you to Marvel with their arms crossed. And that's so unfair. Yeah. And I will just echo actually what you said. I totally agree. I actually really, really enjoyed this film. It's it does have its it does have its flaws. And I think a lot of them could actually be done away if they're given a bigger budget in terms of not all of them. I think some of them there were some issues that weren't weren't really budgetary, but there overall. There was some parts of this that I absolutely loved, not not only in performance, but in just overall like score, the cinematography, the overall story. I really, really enjoyed. And so I think there's a way more that you can love about this film than you can harp on it. And so we'll go over all that. But it's it's of the films that have come out. And we've had a couple of disappointments now, right? Obviously, 83 with Pushpa. It's I think it was another one that we were a little disappointed where I can't remember exactly what it was. Jersey just got delayed, obviously, so that that's not really fair. But for something that had a bunch of height for being the first mother of superhero, I thought they did a fantastic job in delivering, even though we didn't get to see it in like a theater space. Yeah, you get you get it kind of you get to present it to a lot more people when it's on a platform like Netflix. And I hope Netflix puts a lot more money into future endeavors like this. So let's just get into it. I'm going to go with my favorite part here. And you can tell me if it's for a favorite part as well. And it's it's you could probably tell what my favorite part is going to be. And they did the villain. I think they did the villain right in this one. I agree they did. I think I agree without giving it. We're not in the spoilers yet. But because I have all say stuff in the spoiler part of it. But I I wasn't expecting and was really pleased with how the villain was created and what the villain represented in comparison to our our protagonist. And there's just it was. They clearly didn't just set out to make a superhero movie and say, hey, look at us, we can make a superhero movie. They had a story to tell. Yeah. And I thought what they did with the villain and that guy as an actor, I thought, did a fantastic job. And that's some some some places that Marvel has failed in creating iconic villains in terms of their their films on like DC, which is one of their stronger suits in DC, because they have to I in my opinion, I think they have stronger villains in the DC universe. Comic books, not yeah. And the Nolan Batman films, obviously. But I think they did a good job at not only bringing up his arc of telling you his story and and sympathizing with this guy. Absolutely. So you kind of understand what he's doing. And then I thought his performance. I thought he hit it out of the park. I thought that actor did I agree that there was a moment. And this this also goes into so much. I would like to say about the score. But there's a moment that's not giving anything away. You'll know what it is. But there's a moment that he has that's kind of a very pivotal moment for the character taking a turn as it were. And the score accompanying it was was was just exactly what it needed. And I was paying really close attention to the actor in the role to see if he was going to go for choices that were preconditioned in his own mind. And he had already thought it out versus just being the character in the moment. And what I saw was the best thing you can do with a villain. And I would not surprise me if this actress got some theater background. His his his creation of this villain was a very human creation. And that's that's what you need with every kind of a villain that you create. Is that you if you can get us if you can get us to empathize with evil. It's it means the actor and the director and the screenwriter all did great jobs. A fantastic job. And I thought our lead as well did a good job. I just think he was over. I think he was overshadowed by it's always the case by the villain. I mean, I love. I love the villain. I just I honestly I was like every time I thought when Tavino Tavino, I think Tavino was on screen. I was like, this is he's doing a he's doing a good job. But I was waiting for for our villain to come back on this script. Well, you and you could kind of tell and this is not really given a spoil. You can kind of tell almost immediately what's going to go on in the story of who's going to become the villain and who's going to become our hero in the story. But it was I thought he did a good job. And it's not like he did bad or anything. It's just no, no, no. The other guy did so much better. And it's it's like very interesting. It's sorry. Go ahead. It's like Christian Bale to Joker. Christian Bale didn't do a bad job. Exactly. Keith just did one of an amazing performance. Yeah, given a spectacular role. And I found it interesting is one of the things I had said in my paragraph that there are some things that are artistically subpar. And it's part of it is the beginning points. There's there's as is the case in a lot of films that we see there and will be hypercritical about it because it matters so much to us. But there will be things with acting where people are just indicating and they're doing something that's stereotypically tropish. But what I found interesting was that as as once without giving anything away, once we got a twist in the story, I noticed something that happened. And I don't know if it was a directorial choice when they were allowing for some of the indicating because I just I just I did for those of you who may be new to the channel indicating in acting is where you can't get real tears. So you wipe them away, even though they're not there. That's one hundred percent a terrible thing to do unless you're doing over the top ridiculous comedy that is transcendently three stooches over the top. If you're trying to convey something of believability, you don't pretend there's a tear because you've immediately falsified a truth and then we can't have a real moment with you. So I found it interesting that so much of what I saw on the first half of the film that had a lot of that what was kind of glaring, it kind of took a backseat as the story to became deeper and more personal. It got better as it went on. And I liked I liked the the corkiness that they decided to go with like with the two police officer and his like lieutenant, that whole weird vibe that they had. Like it was very creepy and stupid and I liked it. And so I like that it that kind of gave some grace to a lot of the other flaws that this film might have had because it was like this is like this kind of like we're just having a good time right now, which is we're not taking ourselves extremely serious right now. And so I really enjoyed that what they did with that part of film and the filmmaking aspect of it. Another issue that I I'm going to say it every time until it comes, but it's it's a budgetary thing. And I get it. But the dub the the non-sync sound. Yeah, it just sounds it could have been so much even though I thought it was a really, really good film. It could have been that much better if you just gotten real sound. And I get it. You guys sometimes don't like us harping on that, but I'm going to say it because I've seen that people in Malayum cinema and other cinema do do sync sound. And I get it. It's a budgetary thing. And they probably like we're going to put our money to the CGI. I get it. That's probably what that's probably the conversation that happened. Correct. It was. Yeah, it was. So it's what are we going to do? Are we going to rent a sound stage or are we going to make sure the visuals are good? And in that situation, I would go with a superhero movie. We've got to do CGI. I get it. I'm hoping just like on the next ones that the budget will be up and we'll get some 10 times, give them 10 times the budget. But yeah, so I thought that was good. So let's just get into spoilers because I want to talk more. So if you haven't watched it, just go watch this film. I thought everything about this, it's going to be an enjoyable watch. If you are Mali Alam, if you are not Mali Alam, go watch this film. I think it's one of the most. I think it's one of the it'll probably be once we do our dummies. Maybe in my top 10, for sure, I'd say of the year, of the year, just how good it was overall in everything. So if you haven't watched it, please go watch it. Come back and we're going to start some spoilers right here. Other other aspects that I really, really enjoyed was the score. I thought this was a fantastic score, not only in the songs that happened, but just the background music of everything. This would get a bunch of nods if this was like an American film in terms of like Oscar, what what the for for audio, I think. I absolutely agree. I 15 minutes in, I put in my notes. The score is already exactly what this film needs. And I just it stayed that way for the entirety of the film. I thought I thought the score was pretty much about as perfect as it could have been for this film. And another thing, which we noticed in the teasers and trailers, how beautiful this film was. Yeah, this this came across what I was hoping Pushpaw was going to come across in terms of the visuals that it was giving in the trailer of like how pretty everything is. And I mean, obviously they're in, I'm assuming Carol, and so obviously got the beautiful landscape, but everything right from the smoke in some of the shots in the background to the to the rain, to the dark night shots. It was all extremely beautiful. So the cinematographer, let's give a shout out here, Samir Sahir. I can't pronounce that. I apologize. But the cinematographer, I thought did a marvelous job in this film. I agree. Yeah, I agree. And a big I just I can't applaud the whole team enough. They started this movie. December of 2019. Oh, wow. OK. And they got three months into production and shut down happen. And then they had months of shutdown. They tried to take advantage of that and built this big church set and invested, I don't know how much money into this set. That was the land. Oh, yeah, the church set. It was vandalized by extremists who were angry that a church was built close to a temple. Oh, my God. OK. So they had to rebuild their set. If they pretty much had every imaginable obstacle, then their lead actor gets covid. And so to come out the other end of this with their head really held high and you're looking at something with a budget that's literally a hundred times less than a Marvel film. A hundred. Yeah. They should be so, so proud. You and I could give you some Marvel films that this is a better film. Then it's not obviously not all. Obviously, there's some obviously marvelous Marvel films. And it's it's it's almost wrong to even compare it. Because like I said in the beginning, I think this is more like a Maliola film that just happens to have superheroes in it. Right. And because you can't go into this. Well, I'm going to have a big superhero film. It's really not. It's more of like a small origin story that has a little bit of action. And you're mostly going to be just delved into the characters of the main guy and the villain. And that's why it's so beautiful, because you're actually focusing on the characters in this. And you care for these characters, not only the hero, but the villain. As well, you can understand almost why he's doing this not fully, but obviously you can, which is the once again, the the that's an example of good writing when you can when you can sympathize with a bad person or something bad is doing. Which is why we a lot of people like why or why would you tell a story that's glorifying, you know, a criminal or something like that? One, it's storytelling. OK. And to the whole point, like it's you should be sympathy. They're human, so you should be sympathizing with them on some level. It doesn't mean you should accept what they do, right? But I thought the writing in this, I thought the every I was very little. There was some technical stuff that you've already talked about in this with everything. But the overall sets even at the end that you were just talking about, I love that it was a practically made set because that was a beautiful when they went over the bridge and that whole piece not only cinematography wise, but just production wise. Yes. And I'm so sad that they didn't get more money for this because I know they could have done even more. I'm really hoping they do and they've created something that could be a franchise. And I thought about this. I thought of a couple of things in the ending there. Well, first of all, there was a shot where I think it was the car shot where he's lifting up the car and they they take a close up of his sandals while he's doing it. And I know that the the thing that they wear that we typically call a Dodie is called a Mundo in their region. And so here I was reminded of what black kids must have felt like when they saw Black Panther. And I was reminded of what it must be like for Indian kids, especially South Indian kids to see a superhero in sandals and a Mundo. And then I thought it was if you get if they haven't capitalized on this and it wasn't intentional when he's first revealed in his full regalia at the end of the climactic battle sequence, I looked at him and I thought dudes wearing an N 95 mask. Yeah, I was like, he's going to guys that market that thing. Create, create a mask, create a mental Morali mask. Kids would wear it, which would be the superhero for protecting people around you. I was like, come on, was that intentional or not? Because that's freaking brilliant. I don't know if it was intentional. It was great. I market that. I really enjoyed it. I and and on the obviously, we know the the budgetary things that constrained obviously the CGI. But I thought they actually did a good job of hiding some of the which is something we talk about all the time. If you don't have a big budget, so if there's any physical altercations that takes stunt people, that takes that takes choreography, that takes CGI sometimes. And so if you don't have that money, you need to get creative in your filmmaking. And they were so creative in this. And in like if certain things that they were like, we're not going to have the budget to do what we want to do. And so they filmed it in a certain way that it was like you didn't notice sometimes how lower the CGI was than like a normal Marvel film. And so that's hats off to the filmmakers of this film for for doing it. And you didn't even know you sometimes you're like, yeah, I can see that that's CGI. But it wasn't the worst CGI I've ever seen. And I thought they did a really good job at hiding some of the budgetary constraints that they had. Totally agree. I was concerned with the budget that we were going to see some glaring CGI problems that we would have to just look past. Because OK, low budget. Oh, my goodness, that was brutal. There was never a moment with the CGI where I thought it was. There was worse CGI in Padmavat than there was in this. Oh, yeah, definitely. Yeah. And they also invested where they needed to. Like you just brought up the stunt stuff. I read that they hired a Hollywood stunt coordinator to do the stunt work on the film. Oh, good. So clearly. Yeah, clearly they're like, OK, we need it's a superhero movie. Our stunts have to be spot on. But we're going to be OK with some of the we've got to be really careful. I think when you consider the budget they had, they pretty much made as good of a movie as they possibly could have. And it's kind of a small miracle it's as good as it is. Oh, absolutely. It's it's it's really insane. I'm glad it actually lived up to to the hype that it was given up because we had seen two films in a row, I guess, now that they just didn't live up to our expectations of what we had thought they were going to be. No, I'll give you an example. This movie is let me look. I had just looked it up and want to make sure I'm exactly right on this. Yes, I'm right. This film is nine minutes longer than Pushpa. No, it's not. Pushpa was a two hours, fifty two. Are you sure? Because I have the Pushpa trailer. The Pushpa I have Pushpa as that's because they cut it down, Rick. Two thirty. And they cut it down since the release. They've cut it since so we saw the two fifty. Yeah, we saw two fifty, but it's still it's still five hours. Yeah, yeah, and it's shorter than yeah. Yeah, it definitely yeah. This is obviously you can have a long film and it not feel like a long film. And that is all filmmaking and editing in the in the editing room. And this is shows where it went right. And it doesn't actually feel like a two and a half hour film as opposed to, you know, Pushpa or or or. I guess eighty three didn't really feel like I mean it felt long, but it wasn't like as long as Pushpa that felt in eighty three. Yeah, but some nature of eighty three wasn't the runtime. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, this just shows you how like well made in filmmaking this film was, which is great. Obviously, and it's kind of what you expect. It's Malayalam film industry. We know the Malayalam film industry is known for caring about story and actual artistic endeavors. And so it's it's not it's not shocking that they would make a film that feels like a normal Malayalam film that they just happened to put a superhero element. It's exactly. Yeah, exactly. And there also should be note for anybody who doesn't know this, the CGI. All homegrown. This was not shopped out, though it could have been. I'm sure the ticket price would have been astronomical. But the fact that all of the CGI was done from a technological company that's there in South India is again. It's it's just it's as it's as enjoyable as like this is a completely different thing. But when I see something like a movie recently with the awards situation going on with nine days or mass, those are two films that are first time directors that really just came fresh out of film school. So it's basically film school level movie that's being talked about in the upper echelons of the industry for award season. There should be so much pride that they're there going toe to toe. And you said it, I agree. There are some aspects of this that I would compare it to some Marvel films that I like this more than some Marvel films. Oh, absolutely. Oh, another scene that I really, really do it. I think it was one of the first action scenes. It was when he showed up in the bird, the big bird thing. And it was a hilarious fight scene, especially since the kids who was a great actor, by the way. I thought he did a fantastic job that that very good that kid who kept calling him uncle, his little dance while the fight was going on, I thought was absolutely love that sequence. I thought it was hilarious. I the twist when it started to become really personal and we discovered that his dad isn't really his dad. Yeah. And then the overall story, the moral to the story being that, you know, a superhero. And that's what I love about the comparison of these two, the antagonist and the protagonist. They both have the same powers, but it's not about the powers. It's about what you do with those powers and the fact that the our hero is learning that his dad was a real hero and that what real heroes are, are other oriented, not selfish, like the antagonist. So when he has that realization and then right on the heels of that, we get that quirky, funny fight sequence. I was laughing out loud and thought, OK, you guys won me over. I'm fully in now. Yeah. Yeah, it was absolutely fantastic. So glad it lived up to to what all the hype was of being the first Malayalam superhero film. So let us know what you thought about this film or what should be our next Malayalam film industry and also Netflix, Amazon, all your other things. Give give artists like this more money, give them more money to do what they want and don't get in the way. I'm not pleased that it's the public service announcement of the day. So let us know what that other let us know what you thought about the film down below.