Bangalore Days is a likeable new film by director Anjali Menon. To me it functions like a signpost flashing on the road to Malayalam cinema’s recovery which reads, “Great Things Are On Their Way. This Film is Not It. But We Are Halfway There.”
Three cousins- Divya, Arjun and Krishnan P.P are fast friends. Arjun is a thrill-seeking, nomadic racer who lends the film its cool quotient. Krishnan PP is the virginal nerd who is the sutradhar of the story, And Divya alternates somewhere in the middle. Rebellious when needed. Demure when needed. It’s basically a Freudian trifecta of id, ego and superego.
Marriage and jobs lead them from Kerala to Bangalore, where they are shaken out of their childhood and forced to grow up. Divya gets married to a sullen MBA zombie (played very well by Fahadh Faasil), Krishnan’s dad runs off to escape the suffocating clutches of domesticity. And Arjun falls in love with(*SPOILER ALERT*) a paraplegic RJ, an event which has somewhat of a steadying influence.
Bangalore Days is terribly sweet, well-intentioned and lifted by convincing performances by actors Nazriya Nazim, Nivin Pauly and Dulquer Salman. Unfortunately it’s also very plastic. It’s drenched in an Archie’s comic like idealized notion of the transition from adolescence to adulthood. If you fast forward the film, it looks too much like a TV ad for a university (probably Amity). After a while, I started dreading all of the montages that kept popping up. I split them into three categories: 1) Friendship Montages 2) Flashback Montages 3) Race Montages.
If someone took all my memories of being 20 years old and Photoshopped the dark shit till it became beige- it would look something like Bangalore Days (without the tacked on plot).
It’s not my cup of tea. But it could be yours. If you like yours very sweet.
Lady Middlebrow 