May Movie Madness: Athbhutha Dweepu in Six Words

 

Six words are not nearly enough.

 

 

Athbhutha Dweepu ("Wonder Island", Malayalam, dir. Vinayan, 2005)

Starring:  Prithviraj, Mallika Kapoor, Radha, Guinness Pakru (as Unda Pakru), Jagathy Sreekumar, Jagadish, Bindu Panikkar, Kalpana, Indrans, Ponnamma Babu, Vettoor Purushan, Baburaj, Valsala Menon

Worth Revisiting?  Absolutely.  Athbhutha Dweepu has been described as Gulliver's Travels, without Gulliver or the travels.  And according to the film's Wikipedia page, the rights to the film have been bought by Ron Howard, who wanted to remake it starring Leonardo DiCaprio, with the 300 dwarfs in the film reprising their roles.   I am not making that up.  Frankly, I'm not convinced, but boy, is that a remake I would love to see.  The film is the story of an island where the men are dwarfs because of a curse, and the women are....um...."regular" size (in quotes because I recognize this is a bit of a minefield, and yes, I think it's worth pondering the whole thing about size and whatnot.  The film makes the point by the end that it's not the size of the package but the heart inside it.)  Four members of the Indian Navy end up on the island after their helicopter goes down, and the whole film revolves around how they have to escape from the ruling dwarf princes who want to kill them.  Seriously, there is no way to do this film justice in six words.  And it features a terrific performance from Guinness Pakru, so called because he's in the Guiness Book of World Records because of this film, being the smallest person to star in a feature length film.  All that said, I'm not sure I can stomache the rather gruesome final battle against the cannibal giants a second time.

Yes, I did just write "cannibal giants".  Truly, six words are not enough.

 

Comments

[dustdevil.liz]

Wow, this looks fantastic! I'll have to track it down, ASAP.

[katherine]

Not to enable or anything, but I did get mine from Bhavani DVD.

My taste in films has been questioned because of Athbhutha Dweepu, but I think it's a wonderful B-type film. Crazy camera work, dwarf princes, a dwarf servant who punctuates everything with the most diabolical laughter, cannibal giants who arrive on an outlandish vessel -- objectively I know it's not a great film, but oh, how I loved it.