Jayasurya‘s 100th film, ‘Sunny‘ dropped late last night on Amazon Prime Video. While the direct-to-OTT film is a decent one-time watch, the movie was hampered badly by the poorly chosen subtitles (subtitle choice) selected/created by the Amazon Prime QC Team (Quality Control Team). Subtitle errors have been a persistent problem among OTT platforms recently, especially against South Indian releases.
While small subtitle changes or subtle variations are fine in most cases – more than 25% of the subtitles used in this film (‘Sunny’), does not properly translate to English. There are many important interactions in this film that gets lost in translation because of these subpar subtitles. Especially since most of these interactions are on a phone – so, proper translation is key.
There are a couple of important interactions between the characters Sunny and Doctor Eerali. Sunny is going through depression and Dr. Eerali is patiently listening to him and helping him overcome his mental struggle. Sunny struggles while talking with him in the beginning of the film, but eventually builds a rapport with the doctor, over the phone. But a lot of these interactions don’t get properly translated. So when we get some news about Dr. Eerali towards the end of this film, many non-Malayali viewers will struggle to relate to Sunny’s feelings.
This Amazon Prime original does not even give the proper subtitles for the few dialogue spoken in English either – which gets irritating real fast. While a decent amount of the film depends on Jayasurya’s acting; his interactions with the people he talks to (on the phone) is a major part of the film as well – so the correct subtitles are very important. Hopefully, Amazon Prime Video will rectify this issue.
Check out Jayasurya’s performance in Sunny on Amazon Prime Video.