The Chemistry of mediocrity

Let us put it straight: Rasathanthram is a mediocre film & Sathyan Anthikkad has no reason to be proud of it.
If this is where he has reached after all these years of writing & directing, it is better for him to throw the pen away - the earlier, the better.
A weak story line, immature creation of characters, shameless imitation of directors very junior to him and a predictable (and pathetic) ending- all join hands to make the film a total aesthetical failure.
When Sathyan makes the hero (Mohan Lal) to tell the girl (Meera Jasmine) that he could not marry her, viewers really become a puzzled lot. What it could be that unspeakable secret that prevents the hero from marrying the heroine? Could he be an AIDS patient ? ( Gone are the days of blood cancer). Or impotent? or something equally tragic?
No, no, no- Nothing. He had spent some years in jail. That is all.
Is it reason enough? Any way, Sathyan thought so and he tries in vain (and fails miserably) to make us too.
Even when the reason was this flimsy, the director could have saved the story, and thus the film, if the hero was presented as- from the beginning - such a character:someone who is perpetually haunted by the trauma of the jail days.
The pooja sequences in the end reminds us of Priyadarsan's typical running-and-hitting-down climax scenes. Sathyan, the favorite director of the middle class Malayalis in this film imitate the style of yet another director also. See the song scenes, "Aattin kara orathu " (Incidentally, it is the best song in the movie. Sung by Manjari). In Siddique's Vietnam Colony we had seen an identical effort by the heroine to seduce the man with a song "Pathiravayi Neram" (Minminy).
The father-son scenes in which the hero deliver the lengthy I-know-everything lectures, we clould not but think of Blessy. And it is evident that Sathyan too had thought much about Blessy's super hit "Thanmathra" (Molecule), during the making of "Rasathanthram" (Chemistry). Only that Chemistry ended up an average hit.