Melcow Pondicherry movie review: For a long time, Malayalam cinema revelled in the glory of the quality films it delivered one after another. But now the industry seems tired of the spotlight and has decided to show that it can also create absolute atrocities. Or, it is determined to prove that, as my boy Kaali from Mullum Malarum would say, “Ketta paiyan sir indha Malayalam cinema“.After delivering travesties like Titans, Udumbanchola Vision, and Disco over the last few weeks, the industry has churned out yet another abomination, director Nikhil Mohan’s Melcow Pondicherry, which categorically proves how low Malayalam cinema can go.Cinema Anatomy | Scene: Suriya, Jithu Madhavan show the benefits of a movie not being a ‘fanboy sambavam’A bachelor party trip gone horribly wrongAhead of his marriage, Melvi (Arjun Ashokan), who now works in Dubai, travels to India to meet his college friends for a bachelor party. Along with Vipin (Balu Varghese), Annamma (Anna Susan Roy), Rahul (Sarath Sabha), and Albi (Sanoop Thykoodam, who also scripted the movie), Melvi heads to Pondicherry, where they studied. There, they meet Melvi’s ex-girlfriend Isha (Sreelakshmi Vijayan) and their college-time enemy Vinod (Althaf Salim). As they all gather, a series of unexpected events unfolds, changing the course of their lives.Technically a horror-comedy, Melcow Pondicherry is an attack on the audience, with almost everyone involved delivering a dismal job. Although none of the trashy work comes close to Sanoop Thykoodam’s loathsome screenplay, pretty much everyone tries to match it. The result? There’s not a single scene in the movie that’s worth appreciating, let alone remembering.Even Melcow Pondicherry’s editing is shoddy, with continuity issues and the same shots appearing multiple times. For instance, in her intro scene, Annamma is standing in a mobile shop with two boxes in front of her when she receives a call from her friends. The movie circles back to this setup a few shots later, when only one mobile box is there in front of her. That’s when the shopkeeper places the second one before her. Then, she gets another call, which is evidently a follow-up to the first. There are many such moments throughout the movie where continuity errors are easy to spot.In another scene, Vipin asks Melvi to change the song in their van. The scene begins with a track playing in the background, and then the movie shows Melvi pressing a button to change it. But nothing happens on-screen. We keep hearing the same track Electronic Kili created for Melcow Pondicherry. I mean, did no one watch the final cut before giving the film the go-ahead?Story continues below this adArjun Ashokan’s overacting and lifeless writingOne of the movie’s biggest shortcomings is the terrible acting by literally every member of the main cast. Even if we ignore that no one, except Anna and Sreelakshmi, looks age-appropriate for their parts, their abysmal performances are hard to overlook. Arjun Ashokan’s overacting, in particular, is infuriating. Although Balu Varghese and Althaf Salim try to tickle the audience, not a single moment in the movie deserves honest laughter. The jokes aren’t just bland; they are unfunny.Memories of Blunder | Zanjeer: Amitabh Bachchan may have cried in a corner after watching Ram Charan’s disasterBesides, not even a single character in the film is fleshed out. Simply because it’s 2026, the makers have added a woman (Annamma) to the gang. However, she becomes nothing more than a token female character, as Annamma receives not even a tenth of the character development her male counterparts get.Predictable twistsAny person who breathes oxygen can see the so-called twist leading up to the interval from at least 10 km away. The biggest reason is the shoddy way the character around whom it happens is introduced and the scenes around them are developed. The character and twist are as lifeless as the dialogues and, to be honest, the whole movie.Story continues below this adThe main villain’s identity is kept hidden until the last minute. However, the way this character is positioned throughout the movie makes one predict this even before the halfway mark.Nevertheless, the sloppiness of Sanoop’s script goes even further. Although it is revealed that the villain had accomplices who were equally involved in the crime that forms the crux of the movie, only he is punished. The others are forgotten. Maybe the makers were done with the movie, or those who played the roles did not want to waste their time on Melcow Pondicherry anymore. Either way, this only drags the movie down further. One of the movie’s biggest shortcomings is the terrible acting by literally every member of the main cast. (Credit: Instagram/@melcowpondicherry)Melcow Pondicherry is a worthy opponent to director Charu Wakan’s disastrous Maharaja Hostel, especially given that both are said to be horror comedies.One could say that it thinks it’s The Hangover (2009), minus the memory-loss angle and the drugs. But honestly, even The Hangover Part III (2013) is significantly better than Melcow Pondicherry.Story continues below this adThe Arjun Ashokan-starrer is basically marred by convenient plot devices and scenes that appear like skeletons, sans any flesh or blood, where a ghost that can turn its head 180 degrees has to open the door to get out of a van.The only saving grace in this trainwreck is Electronic Kili’s music.In all honesty, Melcow Pondicherry’s story is so thin it should have been a short film. And this short film should have come out in the early 2010s, when Keralam was witnessing a boom in that domain, and people were taking baby steps, learning cinema by making cinema. In that case, Melcow Pondicherry might have earned praise from at least a handful of people, almost like a consolation prize.Turning such a thin story into a poorly made full-length feature film, especially in this day and age, requires guts of the highest degree. Kudos to the makers for that.Story continues below this adMelcow Pondicherry movie cast: Arjun Ashokan, Balu Varghese, Althaf Salim, Sarath Sabha, Sreelakshmi VijayanMelcow Pondicherry movie director: Nikhil MohanMelcow Pondicherry movie rating: 0.5 stars