Amazon’s Uppu Kappurambu is a hard nut to crack. This dark, droll comedy has the petite Keerthy Suresh attempting physical comedy for the first time.
And it’s a sight for our eyes. Keerthy flails her fragile limbs, shakes her midriff and dances like Govinda with a sprained ankle. She is Apoorva, the head sarpanch of the village which is about to run out of grave spots for the dead.
Dig that? Now comes the clincher. Apoorva who keeps getting tips from her dead dad (he too behaves like he has just seen a ghost) on how to run a village filled with seething dimwits who make so many faces in the camera, it feels like a satire for the highschool of the specially abled.
To extract humour out of death is not an easy task. Comedy is a grave matter in this original but frequently over-underlined film. Director Ani. I.V. Sasi has little patience with sensible amusement. The humour here is so hectic, it feels like a scramble to the finish line with every character behaving as if on parole from a mental institution.
Keerthy Reddy is interesting in a fusion of Chaplin and Yogi Babu. She abandons her habitual daintiness with uneven results. However, she remains interesting in her quirky avatar to the end. If there is one reason to watch this film, it’s the leading actress.
Suhas as the village grave digger tries hard to infuse his sketchy part with a semblance of pathos. Regrettably the writing is insulated from all emotions except the droll. Suhas’ rapport with his immediate co-star Keerthy is scripturally distanced.
So it remains throughout the film. Keerthy and Suhas behave like two utterly unrelated souls trying to find a common ground in a situation way out of their hands. There is more kinship between Chinna and his mom (Rameshwari, delightful) than between Chinna and Apoorva.
There is a joke about Apoorva being offered the only chair in Chinna’s shack, which won’t open as it is never used. It is funnier than any of the repetitive graveside jokes.
When Chinna tries to explain his old school ties with Apporva, she yawns in his face. Luckily, the audience never comes to that. The zest for the zany carries us from one outrageous situation to another. This may not be the best of black comedies. But there is something to be said about a satire where Keerthy Suresh blows her nose so hard at a burial that the other attendees cringe in disgust.
The actress is not afraid to make a spectacle of herself. And we are all for her fearless spirit. The film, with all its lampoonish antics, never feels real. The comedy never feels organic. The characters are remarkably rudderless, trying hard to find a sense of belonging in a film that leaves them to their own devices.
