Painkili is one of those films that leaves you confused. There are streaks of brilliance in it, but something leaves the project way off the mark from being the unique experience it strives to be. Written by Aavesham director Jeethu Madhavan and directed by Sreejith Babu, Painkili is an attempt to provide something off-beat and eccentric, but instead, it ends up being random because of the lack of a story arc. While the film is supposed to be about the meeting of two enigmatic personalities–Sajin Gopu’s Suku Sujeeth Kumar and Anaswara Rajan’s Sheeba Baby–it takes a long time to reach the point. Instead, it meanders too much, doling out comedy sequences. While the humour works to a large extent, you are constantly left wondering about the point of it all.

In Sreejith Babu’s debut Painkili, cringe isn’t the after-effect as much as it is the aesthetic the film aspires for. It is self-aware and loud and made by a director with such an original style that he hasn’t yet found ways to bring it under control. How else would you describe some of the wild ideas that are dime a dozen? Take the example of a character named Jaffer, one of the many “gundas” in the film. Not only does Jaffer introduce himself each time he runs into a friend, but he goes on to call everyone around him Jaffer too. It doesn’t make any sense and oftentimes ideas like these are so strange that we’re unsure if we’re expected to laugh or wince. But in the odd instance one of these wild swings begin to make sense, it’s next to impossible to stop laughing.

A few minutes into director Sreejith Babu’s ‘Painkili’, you see a petite Sheeba Baby (Anaswara Rajan) jumping off the terrace and eloping from home after being pressured into marriage. But, she is unsuccessful. She gets caught by her father and casually walks into her home as if nothing happened. This opening scene is just enough to tell you that you are in for a quirky ride with Painkili. Painkili is the story of two different individuals. On one hand, we have Suku Sujith Kumar (Sajin Gopu), who posts ‘cringe’ poetry on Facebook. His trip to Coimbatore changes his life, where he had to obtain a fake mental health certificate to prove his innocence. Meanwhile, Sheeba is a happy girl who wants to study. But, her parents insist on getting her married and pressure her to do so at every opportunity.

Humour in free flow, with impeccable timing, could turn even poorly written films into experiences worth sitting through. But, when the humour is forced, with the effort to make us laugh painfully visible in every other scene, it can bring down even a film with a decent idea. In Sreejith Babu’s debut film Painkili, written by Jithu Madhavan, the attempts to create comedy, except in a few scenes, are akin to the efforts to push out the last bit of toothpaste from a near-empty tube. Writing was not really one of the strong points of Jithu madhavan’s Aavesham, which turned into a major hit mainly due to Fahadh Faasil’s unrestrained, over-the-top performance. Panikili is designed in such a way that almost every character is at some point required to exhibit over-the-top behaviour, even when it does not come naturally to them. The result is a film which struggles to take off, and is confused about what it really wants to say.