When actors with such excellent natural comic timing gather on screen, some laughter is inevitable. Pavithran's questionable intentions and Haripriya's temper lead to the friction that forms the pivot of the plot.
There, they encounter an assortment of characters including the hotel manager Joby (Vinay Forrt) who is dealing with his own share of relationship troubles, and a perpetually drunken stranger played by Jaffar Idukki. To save his rocky marriage, Pavithran buys her a pair of gold earrings and - for reasons I won't reveal here - takes her on a vacation to Munnar. His wife Haripriya (Grace Antony) used to act in Malayalam soaps. Nivin Pauly plays Pavithran KV, a struggling junior artiste in Malayalam cinema who also runs an acting academy. KKK's narrative kicks off in a reasonably engaging fashion. The sad truth is that the script by Poduval himself lacks substance, the film is only intermittently funny, gets repetitive after a point and the direction lacks energy. KKK's problems go way beyond the trite title though. It does not bode well for the film at all that its chosen name rests on this yawn-worthy cliche, the sort about which women are told to "relax, chill.c'mon, have a sense of humour, baby!" No of course, men are helpless victims of their circumstances and/or the female half of the species. Kanakam Kaamini Kalaham (KKK) is a reference to the widely held age-old dictum that all wars in this world have been fought over women or gold, which is most often interpreted to mean that women and wealth cause conflict - not men who actually fight those wars. Perhaps the title itself should have been a warning sign. The promise remains unkept as the script runs out of steam early on and even fails to make an important political point it is clearly aiming at. It starts off well with opening credits that, apart from being amusing, also take a swipe at caste-based surnames, thus holding out the promise of an intelligent entertainer to follow. Poduval's sophomore venture as director, Kanakam Kaamini Kalaham, is a team-up of some fantastic talents yet misses a great script and that X Factor that is essential to elicit laughs.
On any given day, a comedy that brings together director Ratheesh Balakrishnan Poduval who debuted with Android Kunjappan Version 5.25, actors Nivin Pauly, Vinay Forrt and Jaffar Idukki of everything-they've-done-so-far fame and Grace Antony from Kumbalangi Nights, would sound like a dream project. Kanakam Kaamini Kalaham movie review: Nivin Pauly's instinct for scripts goes missing with this ordinary comedy