Valatty is all hearts. A movie made with love which depicts just that!
Major spoilers ahead
Valatty starts out as a children’s movie and so we fittingly decided to watch it on Children’s day. We are a whole family of dog lovers with 2 of our own! One is a crazy Beagle and another a black lab-retriever, our son’s service dog. So obviously, though it seemed like a children’s movie, the whole family was invested in watching it from start to finish! And boy am I glad I chose to watch it too!
Valatty is (believe it or not) a love story of two dogs Tommy and Amalu, who fall in love and decide to elope, when their families don’t agree to have them see each other citing religion!
What ensues is an extremely interesting journey where the two homebred loved dogs are left to fend for themselves because Amalu is pregnant with Tommy’s babies.
Being a woman and a dog mom, my heart wept for Amalu who was out and helpless in this state. She of course had Tommy by her side but it really was overwhelming to see the poor dog like this.
You may have noticed, I’m talking of the characters like actual real people. This is definitely because all the artists lending their voice to each character made the characters come alive and the whole movie experience so real. I must say Roshan Mathew did a wonderful job as Tommy! A few other characters worth mentioning are Bruno (Sunny Wayne) and Poovan (Aju Varghese).
We were surprised to see a Rottweiler as a stray. And then they give Bruno a befitting backstory and it all made sense.
The wise old dog played by Indrans was such a beautiful addition to the writing. His voice itself was so reassuring and calming.
The scene where Tommy and Amalu follow Sumathi home was so sweet. It reminded me of a dog who used to walk with me everyday from my bus stop to home when I was studying in Saudi Arabia. My mom wouldn’t let us have a pet but she was kind hearted to animals. After I reach home, she would open the window and tell the dog, “Okay, she’s home and everything’s fine”. This had become our routine everyday. So I could totally relate to this scene. This is how dogs are, loving caring and all they are looking for in return is some love, attention and warmth. Karidas, Sumathi’s pet dog, helmed by Soubin Sahir was an interesting and humorous character.
After settling at Sumathi’s, the dogs’ lives are turned upside down when Amalu is nabbed by an evil guy who works for a politician who injects dogs and leaves them out as strays and they end up attacking humans. It actually made me wonder if there actually is such a political propaganda to the number of stray dogs in India and they attacking humans, especially in Kerala! In their journey to searching for Amalu, Karidas is hurt and is shown passing away. Both my son and I had tears in our eyes because in his last moments, the only thing he remembers is Sumathi’s voice.
Bruno helps Tommy save Amalu and they are found and return home.
Poovan was the necessary comic relief in the movie. My son was in splits when he heard Poovan say “Enne curry vekkyaan irunna Ammini Chechi vadi aayee”
But undoubtedly the best scene of the movie was Karidas being rescued and being the star attraction of a police squad. It literally gave me goosebumps!
Valatty is a well written dog movie. It’s lovely to see dog movies like Neymar and Valatty coming from Malayalam cinema. We definitely need more of this genre!
Valatty was so heartwarming! Kudos to writer-director Devan. An apt name for the purest species in this world! Dogs… they simply wag their tails and waltz their way into your heart.
Looking forward to many more of such heartwarming stories!