Appattha(Malayalam,JioStudios)

Rating: **

There is something inherently likeable in a film that doesn’t waste time in portraying its 70-plus matriarch as some kind of an Aunt Agony in a Kerala village.Appatha, played by veteran Malayali actress Urvashi, is everybody’s favourite Aunty.She has a kind word for everyone and she employs several underprivileged women around her homespace, just to let them make a living.

So far the film is touching in a distant kind of way, more remarkable for the basic uncomplicated emotions than anything else.Then comes the hard part. Aunty must travel from her village to Chennai to join her uncaring son and his family .All he wants is her property and for her to look after their dog Zeus when the family is vacationing.

The jerk!

Mean son…malleable Mum…get the picture?Sensing a stifling staleness in the story, director Priyadarshan does a flipflop. This is now story of a dog-hating woman who learns to love the compassionate canine Zeus.

The early scenes of struggle between the two convey a weird Home Alone vibe to them with Appatha doing somersaults and crashing to the floor. It all looks fairly alarming for a while, until the narration settles down to a cool-grandma-cooler-canine kind of kinship with nothing happening to grab our attention…unless you are the kind who gets emotional watching a dog in a medical crisis after eating Grandma’s pickles.

There is nothing here to dislike. But the dish is as bland as idlis without sambhar and chutney. Chappatis without pickles, if you prefer, since the protagonist is sold on homemade achaar. Veteran actress Urvashi is required to hold fort. She does so with a veteran’s smugness. But brings no poignancy into her autumnal character. Maybe the brief to her was ‘Spirited Old Woman Never Fading Never Despirited’. Any actor will tell you, that’s not much to work in.

I love the idea of a spirited aging woman taking on the world. But please, there has to be a modicum of gravitas to the storytelling. We can’t have an Aunty behaving like Chachi 420. Lacking in nuances, Appatha is a straightforward smile-a-while effort. Sugarcoated and bland it is the motionpicture equivalent of a vanilla icecream cone.