‘Alappuzha Gymkhana’ review: The most fun you’ll have at the cinema this year

Five skinny dudes turn up at the Alappuzha gym and announce that they want to learn boxing. The man at the desk says, that’ll be a thousand in advance, plus monthly fees. The boys murmur about not being able to afford it. Fine, the official says, how about 300? There’s a chorus of assent, but one of them hopefully asks, EMI?

They say you shouldn’t put a hat on a hat, place a joke on top of another. Khalid Rahman’s Malayalam film Alappuzha Gymkhana is the exception to this rule. There are jokes within jokes, jokes appended to jokes, jokes hanging off other jokes like the last commuter on a packed bus. And it all works. This is a slacker comedy that’s works hard, a babbling stream of slapstick, non sequiturs, sight gags and general silliness. Along the way, it also manages to be a damn good boxing film. 

For those who know and love Rahman’s Thallumaala, this isn't a surprise. That 2022 film was more action than comedy; Alappuzha is the other way around. But their colourful energy is the same. Wazim and Reji were sadder and richer characters, their compulsive brawling a barrier to personal growth, the fracturing of their lives indicated by a messy, broken-up timeline. Alappuzha, on the other hand, is linear and quite straightforward; its central quintet—Jojo (Naslen), Shifas Ahmed (Sandeep Pradeep), Shifas Ali (Franco Francis), DJ (Baby Jean) and Shanavas (Shiva Hariharan)—just want to get into college via the sports quota, and boxing is deemed the best route by de facto leader Jojo. 

Khalid Rahman drafts in one of the Thallumaala leads, the glowering Lukman Avaran, as coach Joshua, who takes the ragtag group to the district tournament (where do they surprisingly well) and on to the state championships. Avaran is terrific here, but—much like Nagraj Manjule’s Jhund—there’s so much lively chemistry between the younger bunch that the film doesn’t have to bother about much else. Writers Sreeni Saseendran and Ratheesh Ravi take their time setting up the various personalities, so that by the time they step into the ring, we’re invested enough that a quickly improvised entry song (“Alappuzha gang moves as one”) is a perfect yells-and-whistles moment.  

Slacker comedy gives way to sports film after the first half. The tournament is a standard action movie format, but Rahman dodges cliches in the Alappuzha gang’s haphazard progress through it (there’s also a women’s team from the district, much more competent, and Jojo, already juggling two girls, promptly falls for its star). There’s not a lot of slo-mo, and the fights are mostly quick and fast. They’re supremely well-choreographed, with each fighter bringing their own quirks: the focused fury of diminutive Christopher (Karthik), rope-a-dope baiting from Deepak (Ganapati), Kiran’s (Shon Joy) growing confidence coming to full boil. It’s another reminder that Malayalam action—rather than its roided-up neighbour industries—is where it’s really at. 

This is a male-focused film, but the energies aren't gratingly masculine. For one, the men are such amiable buffoons that it’s difficult to take them too seriously (Naslen’s would-be lothario can’t even summon up the courage to kiss a willing girl). As in Thallumaala, the women in Alappuzha just about tolerate the grandstanding of their male admirers. It’s no coincidence that the most impressive fighter in the film is Natasha (Anagha Maya Ravi). She boxes with a teasing smile on her face, skipping lightly around her opponents. Earlier in the film, there’s a small hat-tip to the flamboyant Dancing Rose from Pa. Ranjith’s boxing film Sarpatta Parambari (2021). In Natasha, you get something even better, a showboater who actually gets the job done. 

There are shades of Richard Linklater's Dazed and Confused and Everybody Wants Some, films where the stakes are low and the world seems full of promise. Alappuzha Gymkhana doesn’t try and make the quest for sports quota into anything more than the long shot it starts out as. I can see the gang picking up something entirely different the following year, or just sitting around eating hardboiled eggs and trying to impress rich girls on the ferry. It’s an irrational thought, but I hope they stick together. Alappuzha gang moves as one.