‘Koogle Kuttappa’ movie review: KS Ravikumar shines in this faithful remake of ‘Android Kunjappan Ver 5.25’

For a film that deals with topics that can give us existential worry – old age, loneliness, and rise of AI – it serves up quite a few delightful moments

In one of the episodes of Rod Serling’s pioneering sci-fi series, The Twilight Zone, a murder convict named Corry is sentenced 50 years of solitary confinement on a distant asteroid. He is given all basic amenities needed for survival. But apart from the days when officers from Earth bring him supplies, he has no company. It’s just him in a vast asteroid. 

Corry is imprisoned by loneliness.

Then, one of the visiting officers who sympathises with him, gets him a robot named Alicia that looks and behaves like a woman. Corry first hates it. He is sceptical if the machine can actually replicate a human companion. But when it starts alleviating his desolation, he gradually develops feelings for it – for her. The extraterrestrial prison now starts to feel like a paradise. Just him and her in their own world. He gets so attached to Alicia that even when he is pardoned of his sentence, he refuses to return to Earth without the robot.

The very thing he thought was soulless had become his soulmate. 

This is the same premise behind Ratheesh Balakrishnan Poduval’s bittersweet Malayalam film, Android Kunjappan Version 5.25, which has now been remade in Tamil as Koogle Kuttappa. It is about an elderly luddite developing an emotional bond with a robot that his son gets to look after him. 

The Malayalam version of the film was released just three years ago and is streaming on Amazon Prime Video with subtitles. What is the need for a remake then, one might wonder. But this film perhaps warrants one because of the protagonist’s age.

How many Tamil films in recent years have explored the lives of people in that age group? Dhanush’s Pa Paandi comes to mind. But, overall, it’s just a handful. So, a lot of the older audience in Tamil Nadu, who don’t understand Malayalam, can relate to this story – a science fiction at that – especially when it is rooted in their culture.