RAN KEVITA 2

Village boy Suran comes to the city to stay with his friend Janith during their school vacation. Suran brings with him his pet demon Gopalu and the Ran Kevita (gold wand). The ran kevita basically has the power to make any wish come true. The two boys amuse themselves by playing practical jokes on many unsuspecting citizens until they are accused of a crime they didn’t commit. Now Janith and Suran must use the ran kevita to apprehend the real criminals and clear their names.

Ran Kevita 2: Gopaluge Wickrama (RK2) is obviously the sequel to Ran Kevita (2007). The new version follows the same format as the old but this time around it’s the village boy who visits the city boy. Unlike archetypal films which contain a Three Act Structure, this particular film has only two. There’s a drawn out ‘beginning’ which takes up two-thirds of the film and subsequently a hurried ending. The opening scene establishes that the two friends have reunited for another episode of tomfoolery with the ran kevita. What follows is a protracted barrage of unfunny events where Janith and Suran play pranks. Some of the situations shown in the film have been used in countless other Sri Lankan films of the past. The scene where a girl wearing a mini-skirt walks to the bus stop and is greeted by a set of gawking teenage boys is an example of a hackneyed local cinema cliché. Some scenes convey the wrong lesson to young impressionable children; if my thirteen year old son finds a purse at the entrance to a supermarket, I would want him to hand it over to the Store Manager and not hand deliver the purse to an absolute stranger’s house. Practicality in the story is non-existent; why would Janith’s parents leave two young boys alone at home while they stayed at a holiday bungalow? Regardless of whether this film is targeted to children, it was written by an adult. Udayakantha Warnasuriya should have contemplated on whether the exploits in the scenes made any sense.

Kid’s Movies made in Hollywood such as Diary of a Wimpy Kid (2010) and the Harry Potter series contain intelligent and witty dialogue understandable to kids. But the dialogue in RK2 clearly feels over simplified for the sake of young minds. This makes the on-screen conversations boring and lacking any kind of style. Awful dialogue contributes to terrible acting and this is evident in the performances of Hisham Samsudeen (Janith) and Harith Samarasinghe (Suran). Both young actors display artificial mannerisms and their speech sounds unnatural. Child actors haven’t trained for years; all they have are their natural abilities, so it’s the director’s responsibility to extract the good performances. Haley Joel Osment’s performance in M. Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense (1999) is a perfect example of that. Unfortunately for Samsudeen and Samarasinghe, their director was probably more focused on special effects than the acting. Even the grown-up supporting cast give wooden performances.

Previn Jayarathna holds the titles of cinematographer, editor and sound supervisor. This is not necessarily a good think because the shots in the film are as forgettable as an image drawn on water. Anyone with a beginner’s knowledge of Final Cut Pro or Adobe Premiere could have cut this film together. The sound is irritating most of the time; especially the noises made by Gopalu, which brings me to the appalling special effects. I have seen better special effects in amateur short films on YouTube. Gopalu is the Stone Age version of Dobby from the Harry Potter films. The three CGI wizards of RK2 are still unable to synchronize the lip movements of Gopalu to his dialogue. The flying bicycle effect was done much better, way back in Steven Spielberg’s E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982). Why showcase special effects in a Sri Lankan film, if the effects look so poor and cheap? Aren’t Sri Lankan children of today, from both the city and the village accustomed to seeing superior CGI in films like Harry Potter, Chronicles of Narnia and Percy Jackson?

RK2’s writer and director Udayakantha Warnasuriya has made a film that is sorely lacking in story quality and production value. A common marketing ploy is to air television ads that show hordes of school children praising RK2 after exiting the cinema. I’m sure the same kids who praise this film on-camera, will have the opposite opinion off-camera. Present day audiences both young and old have simply seen better local children’s films. Handaya (1979) and Suriya Arana (2004) are perfect examples of well made films with uniquely Sri Lankan stories. Local filmmakers need to duplicate this method and refrain from making shameful versions of Hollywood movies.

Rating: 2/10

S. V. Fernando