A twelfth grade girl walks into a classroom one day to find one of her classmates lying dead on the floor and another one (who happens to be a friend) standing by the side with blood-soaked hands. This is the event that should have ideally set off a nail-biting avalanche of whodunit thrills. But this happens only at the half way point with the director squandering almost an hour under the garb of introducing the suspects. Mani wants us to know that everyone around the victim has a motive. This has been done in super-engaging ways in many instances earlier, but here, the scenes come off like they were sleep-written.
pencil display1Every character seems to exist just because we need a bunch of clowns in the name of suspects for the consideration game. Only that none of the clowns are even remotely funny. A rival school correspondent reels off ROFL death threats over the phone. A school teacher clenches his wrists in anger when the victim trips off the set of files in his hand. And yes, we are supposed to add him to the suspect list. No, I am not kidding. Pencil is sensible like that. Another joker loiters around vowing vengeance because the victim slapped him once for attempting a bad Mouna Ragam Karthik act on one of his classmates (Though he must have been thankful of being left alive in the first place for we readily get the urge to finish him off). Another suspect almost gives himself away by overdoing the good-guy act and springing up at unrelated places, mouthing the most inappropriate lines. Sample this: A student lies unconscious near the swimming pool frothing from his mouth. This good-guy-suspect pushes through the crowd into the camera and spills this golden line “Veyil naala irukum. Sari aayidum!” He could have instead held a placard saying “Look, I may be the killer. But I will keep distracting you with my exasperating righteousness” and stood in the scene. Pencil is refined like that. An inspector strolls around the school for God-knows-what. He keeps giving confusing expressions. He is probably giving cues on the emotion that we should be feeling. But alas! After a while, it all becomes so much of amateurish circus that it seems like watching a bad whodunit spoof. It could be called The Unusual Suspects.
And any respite is not at near sight as we are not even past the half-way mark. And then, the clinching event happens. The seventeen year old girl walks into the murder room and starts investigating it with the air of a seasoned private detective. While making plans, she even opens her crush’s bag and sneaks in a romantic blush. But neither takes the effort to check his pulse, revive him or even call an ambulance. The couple then proceed to hunt for clues, leaving the guy bleeding. Woah! Pencil is logical like that. The girl’s exposition as the crime novel aficionado exists in the original for a reason, but Sridivya neither has the expressions nor the body language to pull off the detective act. She comes off as the over-enthusiastic kid practising a school play. Pencil is believable like that.
pencil 1GV Prakash walks through the movie equally clueless as the audience. He breaks into a duet after the heroine slaps him for God-knows-why. He dances in China with a bunch of Asian dancers (Is it the director’s way of atoning for not giving credits to the original?) while he is not researching for life in Mars. No, I am not kidding again. Pencil is ambitious like that. As for the antagonist, Shariq Haasan, he spends the first half of the movie coaxing girls to sleep with him and the next half lying dead. But we are not fortunate like him. We are forced to sit through the teacher group taking us through a freaking orientation trip around the school. And we are made to endure the bits thrown at us in the name of comedy. We chuckle at a thrill. We gape at a joke. Pencil is hilarious like that. And to top it all, we are made to sit through ten minutes of enriching messages on the state of education delivered by… wait for it… the good-guy-suspect. Shariq dude, lucky you!
And yeah, the clinching twist? Mani switches the knife in the original with a pencil and hopes it makes a difference. Pencil is innovative like that.
