What Is the Story About?
A middle-aged Prince, the eldest son in a family of three brothers, is a bachelor. His good-for-nothing younger siblings, Jince and Shins, are both married with children. Prince, shouldering the family’s burden, runs a bridal wear store. A bank employee, Anna, soon takes an interest in him, but the idea quickly goes south. Later, when an influencer Chinju, falls for Prince, all hell breaks loose.
Performances?
Prince and Family is home territory for Dileep; the script is tailor-made for him. While he delivers the goods, better writing could help him age with grace. His female counterpart, Raniya Raanaa, is an absolute disappointment, hamming her way through an already exaggerated role of a social media vlogger. Manju Pillai gets the meatier role, and if there’s someone we care for, it’s for Safiya (her character).
Analysis
Prince and Family has a premise apt for a yesteryear star craving a resurgence. The film, a throwback to the 90s family entertainers with a new-age twist, is woven around Dileep’s strengths with family dramas and comedies. The story is simple and effective, about a middle-aged man’s struggles to find a match. When he miraculously manages it, he struggles to keep the marriage alive.
The film’s humour quotient, at least in the first hour, is centred on the protagonist’s age and his desperation for companionship, and how it becomes a talking point in the immediate society. He even has a room ready for his future wife at his ancestral home, but keeps finding new reasons to reject one proposal after another.
Safiya, a well-wisher and a small-time restaurant owner, gives him tips about making the right moves with women. KK, a mate at a shop and a womaniser, nudges Prince to take hints when a girl expresses interest. Just when he sees light at the end of the tunnel, a romance takes an embarrassing turn. Soon, a 24-year-old influencer takes a liking to him, and he’s officially hitched.
The rest of the story is all about the clash of the ages, the wife making a circus out of Prince’s life, exploiting his personal life for digital reach, a move leading to drastic repercussions. The narrative, which starts on a feel-good note, plays to the galleries, turning desperate, passing off many problematic moments as humour, exaggerating situations and characters to make the viewer sympathise with Prince.
While the film, quite rightly, discusses the potentially humiliating scenes a middle-aged man, in the want of a wife, may experience, it misuses his character to take a dig at the social media generation, and why it’s time for course correction. The subplot about KK using Prince’s matrimony profile to chat with women without his knowledge is in poor taste and could’ve been handled sensitively.
The comedy among Prince, Anna and her mother and the surprising twist is smart. Yet, the scenes within the family, say the situation where Prince and his brother discuss the latter’s hurry to have a child, don’t leave you with a good after-taste. The ageist humour loses its spunk quickly, and the situations leading to Prince’s marriage with Chinju are neither funny nor believable.
The second hour is more or less a cringe-fest, where Prince plays himself as a victim of Chinju, downplaying her to proclaim himself as a saint. A series of sequences – the marriage reels, her need to make a video out of a funeral, the desperation for online fame and using Safiya’s restaurant as a sacrificial goat – are deplorably written, all to suggest that vloggers have lost their conscience.
By the climax, you’re tired more than entertained. It’s hard to care for Prince or Chinju; their marriage and the subsequent developments in the family unfold so conveniently that there’s no emotional connection in the story at all. Prince and Family is better when it positions itself as a comedy and loses the plot when it becomes a moral science lecture. In a nutshell, it is out of sync with the times.
Music and Other Departments?
Sanal Dev’s music, while situationally relevant, is generally mediocre with minimal recall value. The lively cinematography by Renadive serves the purpose. The writing is inconsistent, with insensitive dialogues, poor character arcs, an overly exaggerated screenplay and convenient resolutions. Even with a two-hour runtime, the film feels longer by at least 30 minutes.
Other Artists?
Dhyan Sreenivasan doesn’t have much to do in the film other than to stand in the same frame as Dileep. Johny Antony’s humour is outdated and largely unfunny. Siddique and Bindu Panicker do the needful as Dileep’s on-screen parents. Meenakshi Madhavi, Josekutty Jacob, and Vijay Jacob are passable in their supporting act, and Urvashi’s cameo towards the end drives the message home neatly.
Highlights?
Dileep’s performance
Initial sequences
Few scenes documenting the desperation for online fame
Drawbacks?
Poor second half
No emotional connection with drama
Insensitive humour, exaggerated writing
Did I Enjoy It?
Not much
Will You Recommend It?
Strictly for Dileep’s fans
Prince and Family Review by Binged Bureau
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