Masterpeace(Malayalam; Disney+Hotstar)
Starring Nithya Menon, Sharafudheen, Ranji Panicker, Mala Parvathy, Ashokan, and Shanthi Krishna
Directed by Sreejith N
Rating: **
Never thought I would see the day when the lovely Nithya Menen would overact. Her comic timing takes a stinging swipe in this over-the-top…errr… comedy. Masterpeace is only funny if you like to see everybody shouting at the top of his or her voice at the same time.
It seems the brief on the set—and the home where the marital mahabharat transpires, is consciously constructed like a set with the yellow and blue colours predominant in a doll’s house style—was to make it loud. Obediently everyone shrieks, so much so that it becomes difficult to tell what they are saying , and what exactly they are arguing about.
Does it really matter?
The main dishoom-dishoom issue, if one may call it that , is a young couple’s squabble which gets violent with Riya(Nithya Menen) brandishing a kitchen knife on her husband Binoy(Sharafuddin). Time for the parents to intervene.
Everyone here seems to be in need of therapy including a priest(Jude Anthany Joseph) who keeps appearing intermittently as though to show there is a life outside the chaotic marital space.
Nithya and Sharafuddin play well against one another. But their onscreen compatibility is never given a chance since they are briefed to squabble at the top of their voice in almost every frame. With their onscreen parents joining in the clamorous marital argument the audience is left wondering why shrieking in some circles is considered a form of comedy.
There is little to laugh with in Masterpeace, a lot to laugh AT. The visual design, for example, is so stylized it seems the director wanted to place his pugnacious protagonists in an unreal ambience . It’s like watching Barbie in yellow and blue rather than pink and pink.
When all else fails, Nithya Menen and Sharafudheen throw things at one another while the screenwriters try to find excuses to keep the serial slithering through five episodes.
If the truth be told, there isn’t enough plot here for even two episodes. Hence mid-way we are introduced to Riya and Binoy’s wife-cheating neighbour Adarsh, played by Anand Manmadhan with such crude cockiness , it makes you laugh out loud in this messy misfire where the parents of the warring couple are so broadly caricaturish they appear to be mimicking all the interfering parents we have seen on screen since Man(and Woman) invented the marital drama.
A side plot in this blasé five-episode ear-shattering watered-down volume-upped Waterloo is about the husband Binoy looking for a name for his company’s lineup of female lingerie as , according to Binoy, men just don’t wear undergarments since Covid
Sadly everyone watches unlimited content on OTT since Covid.Hence , this.
It takes all sorts.
