Friendship is a lit AF theme for mallu movies. After Harikrishnans and Abi & Sona, we were fortunate to get a new classic pair, Ajith and Vijay. Better name suggestions were Ramesh and Sreedharan, with Nair surnames obviously, but let’s proceed with what we have at hand.

Early 2000s – This was a time period when Kunchacko Boban would do films with simple names and Dileep saw movies as movies and not parallel justice systems.

We have hero#1 Vijay “powder kuttappan” Menon with a bit too much of powder on his face.

He has come to a new city to join an engineering college, and stays at a huge house already adorned with his photos in various sizes. Goes without saying, he is a rich spoiled brat. A middle-aged couple is employed by his father to pamper to this grown ass man’s needs and perversions.

Come Ajith, hero #2, an arrogant obnoxious nothing short of a criminal who beats up people for reasons best known to him alone. Ajith maintains a group of people solely for cheering him for anything he does. #SquadGoals

We also have a hero #3, V. Jay with whom runs a parallel comedy track purely for cow dung jokes that never coincides with the main plot, like Rahul Easwar in Sabarimala issue.

On his first day at college, Vijay finds Ajith thrashing up saint Jayasurya with the most common thing in campuses according to Malayalam movies, hockey sticks. A little extra that he is, Vijay gets in the middle of the fight, against Ajith with the mass dialogue ever – “Is this campus or market”.

Back in the day when movie was released in theatres, school teachers across Kerala stood up and clapped for this very dialogue.

Vijay doesn’t have any context of fight, he doesn’t know on which side he is, and he actually looks like Ramesh Chennithala trying to stay relevant in Kerala politics.

It is at this very juncture that the creators of this movie realized the movie’s name is “Dosth”, and dosths should be dosth-ing and not fighting.

One random day Ajith picks up a random fight with yet another goon in the middle of nowhere in what seems like Ernakulam highway, and Vijay comes on his bike, saves him through stunt moves that can only be explained by the newly discovered Narendra Modi waves of gravitational force and rides back into a forest.

Coincidence meeting, you say? It is not over, the entire movie is built on chance meetings that makes me wonder why I haven’t bumped into Nivin Pauly yet.

Ajith doesn’t have any qualms about Vijay orchestrating the entire stunt to impress Ajith and the two immediately hit it off. To express his love for Vijay, Ajith lets him ride pillion on his bike, a “privilege” that was denied to rest of his gang. I am not hinting at anything, but what follows is a mallu version of ‘Mustafa Mustafa’ from the old Kadhal Desam. Like how a pavam rooted girl friend transforms a wayward boyfriend, Vijay gets Ajith to quit smoking, drinking, and thuggery. A true sample of mallu style Dosth with benefits, I’d say.

To ensure that we don’t forget the name of the movie or its central theme, the director has smeared “dosth”/friendship/its million synonyms throughout the movie. For goodness sake we have an awkwardly written shoddy song that cries “Dosth” every few minutes.

Coming back to the story, Vijay has hots for a girl he ran into at Ernakulam North railway station, and later “coincidentally” at the mall too.

Like all mallu men, he wants to marry this woman whose name, whereabouts, or relationship status he doesn’t have a frigging clue about, no biggie right?

What better ways to impress a girl than stalk until her life becomes a nightmare?

So, he takes up admission at the computer centre the girl studies in. Dude has no pretensions about stalking that, his idea of expressing love interest is editing her photo on Paint and minimising the tab in her computer for her to find out #JustY2KSwag

As though that isn’t enough, Vijay also keeps a scrapbook “Love”, on which he pastes literal scraps like the torn off piece from the girl’s shawl or the rose flower she had kept in her hair. He unabashedly spends an infinite amount of time wanking to these scraps too. ALL these perversions are encouraged by the couple who shares his flat. Can’t blame them tho, they have to pay their bills.

The girl, Geethu, persistently asks Vijay to stop stalking her. He doesn’t stop. Finally, frigging police arrests him for stalking Geethu, yet he chooses to turn up at Geethu’s (and coincidentally Ajith’s) home and smothers everyone with his soppy story about true love.

Voila!In the blink of an eye, Geethu develops (pity) love and expresses it in a truly modern and digital way.

Things seem fine actually, two adults falling in love (although one’s consent was attained through seriously problematic methods), but then Vijay learns Ajith has issues with women in his house making decisions of their own.

Flashback into what seems like an advertisement for erstwhile Veega Land, we see a formerly happy family of Ajith leaps into tragedy as Ajith’s elder sister decides to elope bang on her wedding day with Ajith’s best friend. A betrayed Ajith then decides to never give pillion rides to anyone.

Vijay is flabbergasted – should he respect Geethu’s decision and deal their relationship with maturity or save the cherished pillion rides with Ajith?

It doesn’t take long for Vijay to change his decision from marrying Geethu to ghosting out on Geethu, all for his rides with Ajith.

The problems with the college movies in this era is that they are all a conspiracy to push more innocent kids into believing that colleges are these make believe places where it’s round the clock fun with you at the centre. Vijay is heartbroken, but he is dancing his heart out at the wedding reception of his college principal! and his teacher!!, with a scantily clad woman!!!

Here’s a reality check kids – when you’re heart broken at college, you bawl in the shower, drink until you puke bile juices, and pass out in your own vomit. It’s no fun.

Back to the movie, an unsuspecting Ajith tries to shove a marriage proposal down Geethu’s throat. Geethu asks Vijay if there’s any way he could save her from the unwanted proposal but Vijay gives no fucks, because he can’t even remember who pulled her into this lovey-dovey BS in the first place.

Because the drama quotient is low, he pulls in his female cousin to play a vamp in front of Geethu. The cousin turns out to be the only sensible and sensitive person in the whole movie, and she immediately asks Vijay what we have been thinking in our heads : Ewwww, grow up Vijay!

Geethu loses all her calm, like any woman burdened with the shaky decisions made by misogynistic men in this fucked up patriarchal society. Instead of fleeing to a different city and restart life as a liberated woman, she chooses to kill herself.

Ajith and their mother try to get Geethu to a hospital which is obstructed by Ajith’s archenemy, who has “coincidentally” found him in the middle of the road. But thanks to “coincidence” again, Ajith’s ex-dosth from Veega Land past helps him beat the goons up. Geethu, somehow is admitted in the hospital.

As we pray, pls end this movie somehow, Vijay also reaches the hospital and the whole romance-cockblocked-by-bromance is revealed to Ajith.

Nobody is bothered that Vijay is still in Engineering college, has no job whatsoever and has a track record of being juvenile. Everyone is really happy no woman was involved in the decision making.

Moral of the movie : Watch Niram. Better friendship da.

Malayalam version of this review by @cavemanthelast can be found here.