A celebration, I guess, of an oddball teenager who makes a series of bad decisions in service to his love of cartooning. Amusing, not funny. You don’t want to feel sorry for people, but overall the picture here is fairly sad.

If I didn’t know “Malik” is Arabic for “king,” I would have thought it meant “Godfather,” so much does this two-hour, forty-minute Indian epic borrow from the Coppola classics, not only characters and plot, but several scenes that are direct lifts. (Then again, maybe in the Malayalam language that’s what it means.) Unfortunately, Fahadh Faasil, who plays the godfather, lacks the presence, or maybe the acting skills, of DeNiro and Pacino. The scenes of criminal activity are beyond belief, but more important and credible are the personal relationships. Although the lightning-fast subtitles and unfamiliar culture made the non-linear story hard to follow, my attention and interest never flagged. [Amazon Prime]

The title acknowledges the film’s duality – one part about the man, the other about the song. The former is interesting but leaves the singer as inscrutable as he was going in: ladies’ man? Zen monk? fraud victim? poet? The story of the song is more satisfying, and the song is great. I wonder, however, if I wouldn’t have been happier listening to Jeff Buckley, or Brandi Carlile, or John Cage singing more of the alleged 160 verses than getting teased, time and again, with the same two. Talking heads were purposefully and tastefully integrated, and Cohen’s music, which generally defines “lugubrious,” comes off quite well.