Take it from me. Sequels are doomed from the very moment someone thinks of making one. Don’t create, write, read or watch sequels!!

The only exception I can think of now is “Ice Age2 – The Meltdown”, which didn’t disappoint.

When my friend suggested we go watch “2 Harihar Nagar” at PVR, the sequel to In Harihar Nagar (released in 1990), it was more the thought of spending a day chatting and shopping at the Forum that made me say ‘Yes’. At the end of two and a half hours of paid headache, we came out totally disappointed. (Don’t tell anyone – we watched it in Gold class too – what a waste of money!) We could hardly believe that such a movie was made… Has Malayalam cinema-makers totally run out of ideas, are the script writers starving for jokes that they call the collection of all those unbearable utterances as “comedy”?

There is no doubt that Mukesh, Jagadeesh, Siddique and Asokan are very talented actors. But how could they agree to do such a non-existent story and script? Perhaps they expected(hoped) the old magic to work and make up for the flimsy story line. Jagadeesh definitely deserves much, much better dialogues and actions than the ones he has been forced to deliver here. The appearance of Salim Kumar was totally unwanted and added nothing to the story. Perhaps there was no way the climax could be handled, so they brought him in here and there, so that at the end he could come to unintentionally rescue the heroes.

My friend and I tried to laugh so much, in the first half, to do justice to the actors, the memory of the old team and the money we spent. But we ended up looking at the big screen and regretting the time we could have spent gossiping and munching something at Transit or Coffee Day, or rummaging Landmark. There were a total of three scenes perhaps, where we did laugh a bit. And the songs… the old Unnam marannu thenni parannu and Ekantha Chandrike.. made their reappearance to give someone a chance to re-mix the oldies. I believe that the more a sequel tries to bear any resemblance to the original, the more miserably it fails. The characters should not try to do again what they did ten or fifteen years ago – similar dialogues or songs or old antics of chasing women looks absolute nonsense. One should not forget that the audience who loved the original movie have also grown up, they are no longer the bachelors who enjoyed a little fun.

And the plot? Was there a plot? The entire so-called plot was as mixed up as idiyappam. It reminded me of another movie I watched a few months ago, “Twenty20”, which had plots upon plots upon plots, and bored and confused me to death. (At least in Twenty20, they had to justify the presence of all the Malayalam actors alive, so cooking up a noodles-like plot was a necessity.) But I hear that there are people who like such movies where every turn provides unexpected and totally unrealistic events. If you are such a person, who does not relate to the old Harihar Nagar foursome, then go watch by all means.

My rating: Don’t watch.