Thrishanku Review | A Wannabe Priyadarshan Comedy That Never Really Took Off

One of the major problems I immediately sensed about the movie Thrishanku was how its trailer was cut. They revealed the plot in the trailer itself, and hence sitting through the initial 30 minutes of this 110 minutes long film felt a bit awkward as I found myself trying to act like I was surprised. I was hoping to see something totally unmentioned in the trailer post that, but to my disappointment, this chaos-comedy was only stretching a wafer-thin idea beyond its limit.

Sethu and Megha are in love with one another. Since they belonged to different religions and their families were highly orthodox, eloping was the only option. To their shock, Sethu’s sister Sumi eloped with her lover on the day they planned to run away. With the whole plan screwed, Megha is in a clueless space, and Sethu is forced to join his uncles in finding Sumi. We see how the couple deals with this unprecedented scenario in the movie.

The most entertaining phase in the movie is actually the first 30 minutes which they exposed fully through the trailer. The way Sethu sees his family’s reaction, how his detailed plan to get married to Megha helps them track Sumi, etc., sets things up for exciting comedy. But the movie struggles to create scenes that blend organically from the moment the Mangalore journey begins, starting with the comic relief character played by Fahim Safar. Every sequence they have created after that feels like a desperate attempt to make it look like vintage Priyadarshan comedy.

In his typical style as the clueless Romeo with no backup plans, Arjun Ashokan was fine. Like how Ranbir Kapoor decided to stop playing the guy who leaves home to figure out things, Arjun should think about stopping playing the same type of characters again and again. Anna Ben as Megha was also good. Megha is confident and bold, and Anna carries that confidence believably. Nandu, as the typical old-school uncle, was a sensible choice. Suresh Krishna handled the humor neatly. Fahim Safar, as the comic relief, was a really annoying addition. Krishan Kumar, Balaji Sarma, Zarin Shihab, etc., are the other major names in the star cast.

Co-written and directed by Achyuth Vinayak, the film’s fundamental problem is uninventive writing. Beyond the excitement of the basic plot that has double eloping, the writing isn’t making an effort to pull off any surprises. The nightclub sequences felt like an attempt to show the old men in funky clothes. The whole police station comedy was stretched out, and the climax chase was also not merging smoothly with the events till that point. The movie was supposed to be a chain-reaction comedy where one thing led to another. But the sloppy writing makes most of these things easily avoidable or replaceable. The zappy music helps the film to an extent in maintaining the mood. The cinematography aided the narrative in enhancing the emotions in the initial parts of the movie.

The title Thrishanku refers to a situation where the characters are stuck in a position from which they can’t escape smoothly. Even though the dialogue humor makes the movie feel like a light comedy, the deliberate attempts of the writing to keep the characters in a Thrishanku scenario never really had conviction. As a thought, Thrishanku had the potential to be an engaging comedy, but for that, it needed much better writing, especially in the second half.