It isn’t entirely unusual for actors to want to play with the filmmaker’s wand and direct themselves according to their own whims—such is what Guinness Pakru, the shortest actor in the world, does in Kutteem Kolum. The least they ought to do, though, especially if they lack both the knowledge and the talent is to undergo a crash course in the arts and hire a capable writer.
The title has nothing to do with the short-and-long-stick game that was once popular on the roads of Kerala. Instead, it takes its name from the dwarf Vinayakan (Pakru) and his tall, adopted brother Saktivel. Affectionately addressed by the family as Kutti and Kolu (literally, ‘small’, and ‘long’), the duo plays goondism on the streets.
Kutti dreams of marrying his childhood sweetheart, his first cousin. Sadly, her father who had once promised him her hand is averse to the idea of a two-feet-something fellow marrying his beloved daughter. The man is heavily in debt, so he urgently needs to sell a piece of family property. But for that, Kutti’s approval is essential.
Destiny often tends to favor the honest. In his childhood, one rainy night, a shivering street child finds a wallet in the slush and returns it to the owner. The boy is rewarded with a home. Kolu’s integrity is about to be tested once again: a girl falls in love with him; the same girl whom Kutti always idolized.
In the absence of a proper scriptwriter, a major portion has been lifted from a recent film that had flopped at the box office: a pair of die-for-each-other thug brothers, one of whom does all the fighting while the other sits on the bonnet of their vehicle chewing paan, get into a fight because of a girl.
The stunts are hopeless. Someone else dances on the hilltop with Pakru’s girl. And the technical department enforces pace using an overdose of the usual cheap tricks, such as in and out zooming, quick cutting of essentially the same shot from varying focal distances, and dropped frames.
As a person, Guinness Pakru comes across as being very nice. As an actor too, he is endearing, and evokes both laughter and empathy. But he may want to either burn the writer-director’s garb altogether, or study cinema before he makes another disastrous venture into this realm. Or, perhaps, this is a one-off film made simply for another Guinness award: the shortest filmmaker in the world?
