Sachy’s screenplays have deteriorated over time due to their excessive fixation on the acts of drinking, swearing and shunning of the female gender. This ragbag of a screenplay is in fact, credited to three people: Shafi, Sachy and Najeem Koya. Knowing their respective filmographies, seeking logic in a film like ‘Sherlock Toms’ would be equivalent to crime.
So, the first half is all about the evolution of Thomas (Biju Menon in his natural self for the umpteenth time) a.k.a Sherlock Toms from childhood to adulthood, plodding forward with a few stale jokes and plenty of ‘gang-of-men drinking’ scenes. It’s post interval that the story comes to a standstill and revolves around a single location (a star hotel) where Toms has chosen to jump off from and commit suicide, after dealing with a disastrous sequence of events – his job is in shambles, his equation with his wife (Srinda) is terrible, the bond with his plebeian circle of friends weakened and so on.
There’s an attempt to churn comedy out of every given situation, leading to awkwardness-galore. Hence, we have the finance company owner played by Vijayaraghavan running around shirtless trying to take a dump, the fire-force officer played by Suresh Krishna tending to his infant over the phone, the character played by Nelson running bets with random people on whether Toms will jump off the balcony or not – the list of absurdities is too long. Srinda gets the role that Mia played in ‘Chettayees’, writing off her husband both privately and publicly. Mia is apparently the ‘hot reporter’ who arrives on scene to negotiate with Tom. She barely gets to leave an impression on the whole.
The climax is the weakest part of the film. The manner in which the cops look astounded by the ‘big reveal’ is unintentionally funny. This is not the ‘suspense thriller’ you sat your butt down for. This is just a shoddy film that makes you scratch your forehead way too often.
