Valatty: Tale Of Tails

Story: Tomy and Amalu are forced to elope when she gets pregnant, against their owners' wishes. But then an agent of an animal testing centre captures her. Will Tomy rescue her and be united happily with their owners?

Review: One thing to be said about Malayalam films now is that our technical aspects are near faultless. And filmmakers say that it is amazing, considering that one films are made on fairly small budgets. Technically, Valatty - Tail of Tales meets the bar, with cute dogs taking us through romance, pregnancy and dangerous situations.

The film, written and directed by Devan, has a novel concept for Malayalam. Some of our most popular actors and celebs - Roshan Mathew, Soubin, Indrans, Ranjini Haridas, Raveena Ravi and Aju Varghese among others, have done the voice overs for the creatures that form the main characters. The story is basically a romance between neighbouring dogs in a gated community, Tomy and Amalu. They have to elope when the latter gets pregnant, because their owners are not happy with the breeds mixing.

As they leave home, they form a friendship with Kari after they are adopted by his owner. The love story gives way to a thriller when Amalu is kidnapped by an agent for a company that does animal testing. Tomy and Kari must now find and rescue Amalu.

While the first half is fairly entertaining and amusing, the story doesn’t use the fact that dogs are the main characters to full loveable effect. It is as if humans have just been substituted for animals and the situations faced are the same, of course discounting the animal testing. Also, with stray dog attacks getting just a passing mention, the golden opportunity to discuss the issue was wasted.

The casting for the various creatures are perfect and the actors have done an amazing job with the voice overs. The cinematography by Vishnu Panicker captures the mood perfectly, in light-hearted and in darker moments. Varun Sunil’s music is good and it works well that a couple of songs are in English.

Valatty is a fun movie for the family to watch together and have a light laugh.