Aarcflick

"A family-watching Malayalam cinema for all those who believe in Jesus, Ayyappan, Allah and human beings." This was the caption of the poster that was released yesterday for Malikappuram. I will have to admit that the secularism they have brought up on that poster somewhere is an admission of the fact that religion is a vanishing entity in modern society. Malikappuram is a film that tries to build a following for the religion among children, and writer Abhilash Pillai unleashes the inner Udaykrishna in him to create a massive Ayyappan cover-up film that is strictly for children. Malikappuram from director Vishnu Sasi Shankar is screenwriter Abhilash Pillai's third Malayalam release this year after Vysakh's Night Driver and M Padmakumar's Pathaam Valavu. The similarities in the way he has structured the three scripts are obvious, in the sense that all the movies had separate halves and only made sense in the later parts. But what works in Malikappuram is that it do...