Magic Mushrooms movie review and rating: Although it might appear otherwise, it’s not easy to make a light-hearted movie that is simply fun, not overly serious, and may bring a tear or two to our eyes at moments. It’s not that such movies want you to switch off your brain, but they are better when watched with your heart instead, because that’s what they try to speak to. They may not be extremely satisfying, but they make for a chill watch, offering a silly, quick, and breezy experience. Director Nadirshah’s Magic Mushrooms is, in a sense, such a popcorn movie that smartly avoids stepping out of its familiar surroundings.
Ever since he was rescued from a well next to his home as a child by a large group of people, Ayon (Vishnu Unnikrishnan) has feared crowds. Whenever he finds himself in the midst of one, fear completely takes over his consciousness; he freezes, falls unconscious, or even pees his pants, quite literally. Although he initially thought he had superpowers, little Ayon slowly realised he’s far too ordinary. Even as an adult, Ayon never manages to build an identity in his small village in Idukki, and everyone considers him worthless, a situation exacerbated by his introverted nature. Meanwhile, his world comes crashing down when his childhood friend Jewel (Meenakshi Dinesh), on whom he had an undisclosed crush, gets married. Worse still, he is a trouble magnet who can’t seem to do anything right. However, Ayon’s life takes a turn when he meets Janaki (Akshaya Udayakumar). Far more introverted than Ayon, she is a person of habit and extremely reticent, preferring to live in her own world. Nevertheless, somewhere down the line, Ayon and Janaki’s eyes and hearts lock with each other, as if they have realised that only they can understand each other’s silences and insecurities.
One of the beauties of Magic Mushrooms is that its central characters don’t have any embellishments. It’s almost impossible to find such characters in mainstream cinema, which seldom highlights those who never become the nucleus of any room they enter. Ayon and Janaki are the kind of people who rarely make it to the foreground and are often relegated to the background, forced to exist faceless in the midst of large crowds, without the camera ever landing on them, even accidentally, for a second. The movie predominantly focuses on the sheer charm of two such persons finding solace and comfort in each other. Two people — who are often largely misunderstood, picked last in any scenario, overlooked, and ridiculed for not rising to society-mandated standards of emotional intelligence and behavioural patterns — nesting in each other and becoming one another’s home.
Whenever Ayon and Janaki are together, Akash Dev’s writing is as sweet as it can be, giving their relationship a sense of elegance without even allowing the narrow-minded among the audience to make tasteless assumptions regarding their character traits. This is particularly true in the case of Janaki.
At the same time, although she is reserved, she doesn’t hold back when her mother confronts her about her interfaith relationship with Ayon, and admits to it without fear. When she wants to feel loved, she doesn’t care about where they are and bluntly asks Ayon for a kiss, which helps in reassuring him that she genuinely loves him as well. When they are together in her room one night, without her family’s knowledge, Ayon finally opens up about his childhood traumas, underscoring how he isn’t hesitant to be vulnerable around Janaki. Even better, she doesn’t offer him advice or solutions; instead, she simply listens, sitting as close to him as possible. It’s in these little, heartening moments that Akash’s script shines the most, almost like offering a tight hug to those who rarely receive one.
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Unfortunately, it’s only in these moments that Magic Mushrooms impresses, as the writing and execution in other portions — particularly the scenes featuring Ayon and his friends, such as Paappi (Abin Bino) and Pookkala (Shameer Khan) — are quite bland. Although Nadirshah and Akash try to slip in a few jokes and one-liners, even using fantasy to do so at times, their efforts rarely yield fruitful results. Worse still, much like other Nadirshah directorials, Magic Mushrooms also contains quite a few pointless dialogues that give the impression that the makers introduced them simply to show off their knowledge regarding new-gen lifestyles and terms like Bumble, ChatGPT, depression, and Santhivila Dinesh’s “azhuka cherukkan” comment. The film also features several overly poetic dialogues that sound as if they were crafted for sadposting on social media.
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Although Ayon’s father, Jose (Jaffar Idukki), and Janaki’s father, Divakaran (Bobby Kurian), appear on screen far too often, they end up being rehashed versions of the characters the two actors have been playing for the longest time. Meanwhile, characters like Paappi, Pookkala, and Kuttappan (Harisree Ashokan) are reduced to delivering ‘funny’ dialogues, rendering them purposeless. While Vishnu Unnikrishnan’s performance is good, it might be time for both him and filmmakers to realise that he is no longer convincing in young-adult roles, given that it has been 10 years since Kattappanayile Hrithik Roshan.
One of the major shortcomings of Magic Mushrooms is Nadirshah’s direction, and his frequent attempts to slip in humour at odd and unwanted junctures, complicated further by his inability to ensure subtle portrayals. Had another person directed Akash’s script, the movie might have turned out better. Also, Nadirshah should consider not composing music for his films, as his songs often feel mismatched with the visuals. While his parodic tracks are fun to listen to as singles, they only detract from the overall experience when in movies, and the extremely disappointing music of Magic Mushrooms serves as a testament to this.
Magic Mushrooms movie cast: Vishnu Unnikrishnan, Akshaya, Abin Bino, Meenakshi Dinesh
Magic Mushrooms movie director: Nadirshah
Magic Mushrooms movie rating: 2 stars
