The highly anticipated Malayalam direct-to-release feature film, ‘Bro Daddy‘ has dropped on Disney+ Hotstar… and it is safe to say that the film is a definite crowd-pleaser. The movie has a stellar cast, brilliant quips and Mollywood pop culture references, with a solid script backing the movie. However, the best part of this Prithviraj directed film is Mohanlal, who shows his versatility as an actor in this somewhat nuanced role for a situational comedy. However, this is Prithviraj’s second directorial and both of his films have featured Mohanlal as its primary lead. With a third Prithviraj directorial on the way featuring Mohanlal again, does this mean that actor-director can only release crowd-pleasers that feature Mohanlal?
Prithviraj Sukumaran is a unique Malayali actor. He is old enough to have been a part of some old-school, mass-type films during the mid-to-late 2000s, but young enough to have been a part of the newer generation of actors during the “Mollywood cinema revolution” during the 2010s. The actor has said it himself, that after working in Mollywood, he has come to appreciate both types of films and if done right, any film can be a crowd-pleaser. Still, his experience with working in different types of films in the Malayalam film industry certainly helped him with directing ‘Lucifer’ and it definitely helped with the recently released ‘Bro Daddy’.
This shows that Prithviraj knows how to direct actors like Mohanlal who is a megastar in the Malayalam industry while adding his own spin into his films. The aforementioned third Prithviraj directorial is ‘Empuran’, the sequel to his first directed feature film, ‘Lucifer’. ‘Lucifer’ is the only Malayalam film to ever make over Rs. 200 crores – so the actor-director has cemented his name in the Mollywood history books on his first try. Still, if the new writer-director proves that he can make box office hits even without Mohanlal, Prithviraj will have cemented himself as another brilliant next-generation filmmaker that younger artists should be aspiring towards.