This weekend, two Malayalam films hit the screens. While the experience of watching Blessy's Bhramaram, is very good, the another titled Doctor Patient, a film directed by Vishwanathan starring Jayasurya and Radha Varma, can be compared to being locked up in a mental asylum for a day.
The film is about a mental hospital managed by Dr Rakhi Devadas (Radha Varma). Dr Reuben Isaac (Jayasurya) comes to take up a new assignment there. Dr Reuben has eccentric ideas in treating patients, and this leads to confrontation between him and his boss from the word go, and predictably it leads to romance as the story progresses.
The mental hospital looks like a drama set with stereotypical characters in weird hairdos paraded as mentally ill patients. Their antics are supposed to induce laughter. The ensemble cast of comedians make effort to do that but cannot succeed after a point.
The director brings in a surprise element in the form of actor Mukesh, who claims to be the original Dr Reuben Isaac and Jayasurya being his patient Bobby, who had escaped from his hospital in Ooty. Bobby had dropped out of medical college due to mental illness. What happens next is hard to believe.
Jayasurya after doing a couple of intense roles in the past few months returns to doing senseless comedy. Radha Varma has nothing special to offer and is mediocre to say the least. That leaves the comedians led by Jagathy Sreekumar, Suraj Venjaramoodu, Anoop Chandran, Bijukuttan and others to entertain us, which they fail to do due to lack of cohesiveness and purpose.
In final analysis, Doctor Patient drives viewers crazy.
Rediff Rating: 
