Pennu Case movie review: Nikhila Vimal film makes for a passive watch

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During interrogation, she opens up about her past and reveals that she committed her first scam in Mysuru, colluding with a gang led by local don David (Shivajith), to find money for her ailing mother’s treatment. However, she explains, she was soon entrapped by David, who began threatening her and forcing her to commit more frauds, thus making her part of a larger chain. With all the evidence solely against her, Rohini is now in deep trouble. Feeling sorry for her, Manoj and his fellow officers decide to help her and expose the racket, which apparently also involves local political bigshot Jeevan (Kiran Peethambaran), with whom Manoj has a personal beef.

One of the major strengths of Pennu Case is that it focuses on only the smaller things: tiny delightful moments, small jokes, modest drama, and so on. It never tries to bite off more than it can chew. While that approach has helped it to some extent, it has also proven to be a bane, as the movie never manages to grow on the audience beyond a certain point. For most of the film, viewers only feel like watching it passively, as it never attempts to explore its moments beyond a superficial level. From the very beginning, things are quite plain and in your face, kept slightly interesting solely by the few funny exchanges between various characters. However, since even the jokes aren’t chuckle-worthy and the moments aren’t too intriguing, the burden of continuing to watch the film falls squarely on the audience, with not many elements to keep them engaged. Had at least the lines been a bit more interesting, Pennu Case’s woes might have been mitigated to some extent, particularly since the movie is dialogue-heavy.

Watch Pennu Case trailer here:

(Spoilers ahead) At the same time, what complicates things for Febin and his co-writers is that they have a major suspense to reveal in the climax. So, their attempts are also to ensure as much secrecy as possible, executed through misdirections using an unreliable narrator. However, the buildup to this reveal isn’t strong enough, and at least some viewers might see through it early on. As a result, if they feel the climactic reveal isn’t impressive — having seen it coming beforehand — they might find the entire movie disappointing, since Febin and his team’s conscious downplaying of certain aspects only saps the movie’s overall energy as it has prevented them from extracting more from the narrative.

While thinking about Pennu Case again could make some curious about Rohini, she may well be the only one who manages to elicit that reaction, as almost all others, including Manoj, are reduced to the dialogues they have to deliver. The movie also features a slew of supposedly supporting characters, like Manoj’s fiancé Vijisha (Anarkali Nazar) and Thomas (Irshad Ali), one of the victims of Rohini’s matrimonial fraud, who appear and disappear out of the blue, contributing little to the overall narrative. At the same time, although the film sidesteps misogynistic portrayals to a great extent, it does feature a few problematic depictions, the most notable being the portrayals of the female police officers — one perpetually preoccupied with vegetable cultivation on the station premises, mostly unperturbed about her official work, and another obsessed with television soap operas.

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Although Nikhila Vimal’s expressions during Rohini’s stressful and emotional moments are more or less the same as the monotonous ones she is frequently trolled online for, it doesn’t become too much here, particularly since the character has more to do in the film. However, had Febin and his co-writers focused more on fleshing out Rohini’s character instead of the misdirections, she could have turned out better. While Hakim Shahjahan and Aju Varghese are serviceable in their roles, Ramesh Pisharody as Vijayakumar, another one of Rohini’s victims, offers more laughs than all others combined.

Pennu Case movie cast: Nikhila Vimal, Hakim Shahjahan, Aju Varghese, Ramesh Pisharody
Pennu Case movie director: Febin Sidharth
Pennu Case movie rating: 2 stars