Aadarsha Kutumbam movie review: Trivikram-Venkatesh reunion deserved a better film
The Indian Express · Yashaswini Sri ·
Aadarsha Kutumbam movie review and ratings: Trivikram Srinivas' Aadarsha Kutumbam is a film that entertains generously in its first half and then spends its second half undermining nearly everything it built.
Aadarsha Kutumbam movie review: The most dangerous thing a group of strangers can do is decide to become a family. That choice is both their strength and their weakness, because a family that chooses to exist can also choose to fight for each other, no matter what. The best thing about this “Aadarsha Kutumbam” is that Trivikram Srinivas still knows how to write a middle-class Indian family that makes you feel like he has been eavesdropping on your relatives. The worst thing about it is that he does not seem to know what to do with that family once the guns come out.
Chittibabu and Swarna, played by Venkatesh and Srinidhi Shetty, live in House No. 47 with their two children, Sampoorna and Sharva. The family is deep in financial trouble, but soon go from rags to riches after winning a lottery. The family moves from their modest house to a luxury villa. But suddenly, the family is covered in blood, and have the knives out. The film shifts gears entirely, moving from family comedy into action thriller territory, and it never quite recovers.
It took 25 years for Trivikram Srinivas and Venkatesh to make a film together, and the actor is still Trivikram’s biggest asset. He handles the comedy with the effortlessness of a man who has been doing this for over three decades, landing Trivikram’s lines with a natural ease that makes the written word sound like something Chittibabu would actually say. His transformation from the lovable, overwhelmed family man to someone capable of violence is the film’s central dramatic idea, and Venkatesh presents the shift with conviction, even when the writing around him does not support it. There is a physicality to his action sequences that is surprising for an actor his age, and a vulnerability in his comic scenes that is surprising for an actor his size. He holds the film together in sections where any other performer would have lost the audience.
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