ED: Extra Decent

ED: Extra Decent took me by surprise as I saw shades of rare black humour in a Malayalam film. The titular moniker is for Suraj Venjaramoodu's character where he dons the hat of the "most dysfunctional" in his small dysfunction family. The attempt at comedy is mostly tired but ED still manages to make you laugh here and there. But what definitely grabs your attention is Suraj's performance as the eccentric and weird grown-up who has scores to settle. I had a ball watching this with my family as we could ask each other if we would ever do something like what the characters in the film do to each other. A good watch!

On the whole, the film worked for me based on the following:

1. Suraaj's performance as the psychotic Binu-exhibiting sadistic shades and cleverly concealing that persona-is spectacular.

2. Ashif Kakkodi's script keeps the proceedings engaging with instances of dark humour sprinkled throughout the narrative. Several "family cliches" are subverted.

3. Aamir Pallikkal's directorial treatment is a vast improvement from Ayisha.

4. Ankit Menon's music packs more to each scene - be it an underlining of dark comedy or emotions.

5. Great comedic timing exhibited by the supporting cast - especially Shyam Mohan, Vineeth Thattil David, and Raffi.

6. Vinaya Prasad aces her subtle-yet-crazy mommy role.

7. Not the perfectly packaged finale but it's apt as a concluding note.

8. This one is probably going to divide audiences based on their interest in / aversion to the genre. I liked it.

I just watched ED: Extra Decent and I'm still trying to figure out what the point of it all was. The movie was like a big mess, with a bunch of weird characters and a plot that didn't make any sense. I mean, I think it was supposed to be a dark comedy or something, but it just wasn't funny.

The main guy, ED, was just annoying and I didn't care about him at all. He was like a whiny baby who couldn't get his life together. And the supporting characters were just as bad. They were all like caricatures or something, with no depth or development.

The jokes were stupid and fell flat. I didn't laugh once during the whole movie. And the pacing was all off. It was like they took a bunch of random scenes and stuck them together without any idea of how they fit together.

I don't even know why I watched the whole thing. I guess I was just hoping it would get better or something. But it didn't. It just got worse and worse.

Overall, I would not recommend ED: Extra Decent to anyone. It's a waste of time and money. Unless you like watching stupid, unfunny movies with annoying characters and a nonsensical plot. Then I guess you might like it. But for everyone else, stay far, far away.

I'm going to give it a 3 out of 10. And that's being generous.

It's an odd movie-with a rather improbable plot and unimaginable situations. But it doesn't disappoint, at least not to the level you'd expect. The screenplay lacks clarity, and the direction fails to impress. Still, there's something about it. It finds a strange sweet spot between a dark drama and a grey-toned comedy-if that makes sense. Suraj's performance is what keeps it afloat, doing a decent job of masking the glaring negatives.

Don't go in with high expectations and you might actually enjoy it. It starts to dip a little after the halfway point. The pacing and sequence of events begin to feel a bit dry, but not enough to completely lose you. There are certain moments that genuinely make you laugh. It's one of those movies that leave you feeling uneasy and unsure-was it good or bad? You can't really tell.

It was a decent attempt from the creators and the first half worked well for me. There were some moments of laughter, but the screenplay became sloppy after a while and didn't fully entertain the audience in me. The story was a creative one but it could have been developed a bit more by adding some more interesting, comedic contents and that's what this movie lacked.

Suraj, as usual has performed well and all the other characters have peformed well. The story could have been more engaging and it would have been a great dark comedy from Mollywood, many scenes in the second half was not necessary at all.

Other aspects like production design, cinematography were fine. The BGM was supbar.