Veruthe Oru Cinema

I generally avoid "mainstream" Malayalam movies like the plague, and one of the reasons was brought home to me (again) the other day when I had to watch a few scenes of "വെറുതേ ഒരു ഭാര്യ" ("Veruthe Oru Bharya").

The protagonist has a wife and a teenage daughter. He gives his daughter a cell phone. She uses it to talk to a secret boyfriend (a classmate). Secret, because there is no other kind in Kerala. They grow close and one day he invites her to cut class and go to some event she desperately wants to go, and she agrees. So off they go in his jeep. But the jeep breaks down, they are stranded in what looks like a deserted forest and it gets late. Then three young goons appear out of nowhere and promptly prepare to abuse the girl while the previously bold boy is watching helplessly(!). Now the distraught protagonist appears, prompting the three young thugs to attack him instead. It is never clear why the three scrawny young men would choose to assault a boy and a girl, much less a man, a boy, and a girl together. Anyway, enough of that and the police appear suddenly, and the scene is over.

Now, I'm inclined to think that the moral of the contrived story is that the parents should know when their under-age children are on a date and where, but I forget where I am. So we cut to the Police station.

No surprises here--it is time for Mr. Responsible Policeman to tell the father and daughter (and the audience, no doubt) about the dangers of the cell phone and the internet, and how the two great evils of the technological age, namely, getting assaulted by psychopathic rapists and getting calls from a boyfriend, would have been avoided if the father weren't so liberal with the daughter.

*puke*