Masterpeace Is A Noisy Humorless Comedy

Masterpeace(Malayalam; Disney+Hotstar

Starring  Nithya Menon, Sharafudheen, Ranji Panicker, Mala Parvathy, Ashokan, and Shanthi Krishna

Directed by Sreejith N

Rating: **

Never thought I would see the day when the lovely Nithya Menen would overact. Her comic timing takes a stinging swipe in this over-the-top…errr… comedy. Masterpeace is only funny if you like  to see everybody  shouting at the top of his or her voice  at the same time.

 It seems the brief on  the  set—and the home where the marital mahabharat transpires, is  consciously constructed  like  a set with the yellow and  blue colours predominant in a  doll’s house style—was  to  make it  loud. Obediently  everyone shrieks, so much so that  it becomes difficult to tell what they are saying , and what exactly they are arguing about.

Does  it really matter?

The  main dishoom-dishoom  issue, if one may call it that , is a young couple’s squabble  which gets violent with Riya(Nithya Menen) brandishing  a kitchen knife  on  her  husband Binoy(Sharafuddin). Time  for the parents to intervene.

Everyone  here seems to be in need of therapy including a priest(Jude Anthany Joseph) who keeps appearing intermittently  as  though to show there is  a life outside the chaotic marital space.

Nithya  and  Sharafuddin play well against one  another.  But their onscreen  compatibility is never given a  chance since they are briefed  to  squabble at the top of their voice in almost  every frame. With their onscreen parents joining in the clamorous marital  argument the audience is left wondering why shrieking in some circles  is considered  a form of comedy.

There is little to laugh with in Masterpeace, a lot to laugh AT. The visual design, for example, is  so  stylized it seems  the director wanted to place his  pugnacious protagonists in an unreal ambience . It’s like watching Barbie in yellow  and blue rather than pink and pink.

When all else fails, Nithya Menen and Sharafudheen  throw things at  one another while the  screenwriters try to  find excuses to keep the  serial slithering through five episodes.

If  the truth be  told, there isn’t enough plot  here for even two episodes. Hence mid-way we are introduced  to Riya  and Binoy’s wife-cheating neighbour Adarsh, played by Anand Manmadhan with  such crude cockiness , it makes you laugh out loud in this messy misfire where the  parents  of  the warring couple  are so broadly caricaturish they appear to be mimicking all the interfering parents  we have seen on screen  since Man(and Woman) invented the marital drama.

A  side plot in this blasé five-episode  ear-shattering  watered-down volume-upped Waterloo is  about  the husband Binoy  looking for a name for his company’s lineup of  female  lingerie as , according to Binoy, men  just don’t wear undergarments since  Covid

Sadly everyone watches unlimited content on OTT  since Covid.Hence , this.

It takes all sorts.