MR. AND MS. ROWDY MOVIE REVIEW CLICK TO RATE THE MOVIE

Jeethu Joseph's Mr. and Ms. Rowdy opens with a wealthy pedestrian's car being pelted by a gang of kids, who grow up to become a bunch of failed thugs, or "quotation gangs". The film's beginning gives us the start for an underdog story, but it is let down by some really unconvincing writing, as the maker's efforts go into making a comedy out of a film that has the potential to be a nail biter.

The film tells the story about a gang of five who are trying to get a big break in the underworld business. Things hit a rough patch when their lives get accidentally entangled with a stranger (played by Aparna Balamurali). The first half throws a lot of underwritten setups in order to give some depth to the lead character, Appu (played by Kalidas Jayaram). For example, the scene involving a strike to close down factory was solely aimed at generating comedy, rather than using it to establish a conflict between the film's central characters. The film uses some amount of slapstick humour to generate laughs, but how will it work if the scene is oversold by a really noisy and jarring background score. The film had so many possibilities for drama in the first half that is left unused.

The second half's initial portions also suffer from the same problem. The film has to go through a lot of flab in order to finally get into the plot. The backstories are unveiled in a really hasty manner, through a random revelation by a supporting character. The gags in the initial portions of the second half have some shades of misogyny to it, as the hero and his cohorts try to shoo the heroine out of their life using force, and these scenes are placed at a moment when the audience tends to root for the heroine. As a result, the humour feels a bit misdirected.

But it's the latter portion of the second half where the plot really kicks in, the friendship gets tested and some threat is posed to the protagonists, even though it comes across as a malnourished version of the director's earlier film, Drishyam - a classic example of focussed storytelling that this film really needed.

The film makes really lesser effort to create a mood. Instead, a background score is deployed so that it really does the opposite. Arun Vijay's music literally instructs us to laugh at the funny portions and be serious at scenes that are not intended to be funny. Kalidas Jayaram's earnestness is under-utilized by the shallow characterization. He was a delight in a scene where he spouts lies without even the blink of an eye. Wish the movie had a lot of moments like that. But it's Aparna Balamurali who gets to say the most cheekiest of lines and somehow gives life to the film. Vijay Babu gets to play the only well-written character (strictly according to the film's standards) and underplays it well within the role's frustratingly short screentime. One hopes that Jeethu Joseph gets his form as a storyteller back.