Monster movie review: This Mohanlal film is outright offensive – The Indian Express
In Monster, Mohanlal plays Lucky Singh. He is a turban-wearing Sikh, who speaks fluent Malayalam. As he helps Bhamini (Honey Rose) change a flat tire, he recounts the story behind his look. He tells her that his life was marked by a series of misfortunes when he was in Kerala and he found his redemption at the Golden Temple in Amritsar, Punjab. The day he embraced Sikhism, his fortunes changed and he developed a Midas touch, he claims. Thus, he became Lucky Singh.
Lucky Singh arrives in Kochi to conduct some business but it’s not hard to guess he has ulterior motives. We can feel that Lucky is hiding a ‘monster’ behind his people-pleasing persona. He latches onto Bhamini, who is tasked with chauffeuring him around the city. He shamelessly flirts with Bhamini under the pretence of harmless humour and after a point, it gets a little creepy. But, we know, it’s all a ruse, Lucky will come out clean any minute now. We desperately hope that the twist would be so mind-blowing that we won’t even remember all the nonsense we were subjected to so far. But, it never gets better. The film goes downhill post-interval without any reward at the end.
The biggest twist in Monster is the main antagonist is a homosexual. Lucky is stunned, his jaw drops when he learns that the criminal that he has been chasing fancied same-sex partners. It’s one of the biggest facepalm moments in the movie.
Monster is a horrible, horrible, horrible film. Is it mediocre? A big yes. Even though one can show some tolerance towards the incompetence of the creative minds behind this sorry excuse of a film, the amount of ignorance that it demonstrates is impossible to forgive. Screenwriter Udaykrishna and director Vysakh don’t have the slightest idea about the challenges faced by the members of the LGBTQ community. And they have applied the same narrative devices that one would use to shape a run-off-the-mill story about a psychotic serial killer on the loose. This film is just outright offensive. Besides the hero seemingly finding it’s so uncommon and rare to see gay criminals, there is no surprise in the “big reveal.”
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It’s time Mohanlal stops signing every film that comes to his reading table. Instead, he has to pick the projects that honour his formidable body of work spanning over four decades. This is not the movie for a versatile actor who has given us Iruvar, Kireedam and Drishyam. This is a film for amateurs and is not meant to be performed by a cinema giant.