Sinhawalokanaya (Cricket Movie) Is Pretty Bad
A friend of mine had a bit part in Sinhawalokanaya, a cricket movie starring rapper Delon. We went to see it, and it was worse than I thought. It’s not even so bad that it can be laughed at. It’s just bad. The story is basically Lagaan plus time travel, which could be great, but it’s not. While it starts fast it slows waaay down and adds a lot of boring stuff that neither cements the characters or moves the plot forward. The movie emerges as a boringly bad mix of crude racism, jingoist anti-colonialism and poor production values.
This is not to say that this genre of film is necessarily bad. Ranjan Ramanayake produces silly movies which, however, still have some transcendant awesomeness to them. The hero is clearly a hero, if overplayed, the damsel is clearly the damsel and there are funny bits and political jokes throughout. One Shot is not a great film, but it is fun to watch.
Sinhawalokanaya, however, has all of the poor production values (colonials show up in a semi-modern truck, dressed like French homosexuals, riding horses on paved roads) and none of humor or wit. It’s never really clear that Delon is the main character, or how his character develops at all. His love affair is completely peripheral to the plot, the damsel is not especially attractive. Even Dilshan Tillekeratne’s appearance in the film is not especially interesting.
This doesn’t even address the huge plot holes involving time travel. The villagers in the movie, for example, use time travel to go and learn cricket so they can come back and challenge someone’s son in a match for British dominion of the country. Why not bring back guns? Or modern medicine? Perhaps that’s a matter of choice.
I dunno, I suppose it is to be assumed that a time travelling cricket movie starring a B-list rapper would be bad. However, done right, such a film could be transcendentally bad, rising above bad to another level of awesome. Sinhawalokanaya, alas, is just merely bad.
Posted on Wednesday, February 9th, 2011 in sport, Sri Lanka, Video.
Mohsin Hamid, author of How To Get Filthy Rich In Rising Asia, has a nice 
I’m happy to be featured in Echelon magazine’s 40 Under 40 feature, profiling young people who contribute to the economy in some way, mainly in business but also in terms of innovation and thought leadership. It’s an interesting article not just in that I’m in it (mainly for work on indi.ca and 
I won’t add too much commentary, but just read I guess. The youngest Rajapaksa, Rohitha (Chi Chi) has given an amazing interview to the 
In 2009 this strange character appeared on the Sri Lankan Internet scene, getting angry, flaming, trolling whatever. Then he started naming anonymous bloggers, posting comments as people’s kids, nasty stuff, for which I removed him from 
hahahahahah. dressed like French homosexuals… ^___^
I have to watch this!
Sinhavalokanaya? What does that mean?
People die of heart attacks in this country if a match is lost. Do you think they’d bring guns or medicine back instead of Cricket? I’d say it’s perfectly logical :P
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Hey man…your movie review is quite good. Stick to that instead of writing sycophant crap about Rajapaksa and his Family Dictatorship and taking pot shots at the west!
ps. Just out of curiosity…would you happen to know HOW MANY american journalists have been killed or abducted or beaten up in America for writing against the Iraq and Afghanistan war???
Pres Bean,
Unlike the crude, unsophisticated GoSL, the Americans tend to kill foreign journalist outside of the US, where their deaths can be blamed on collateral damage.
http://tinyurl.com/64qkp7w
US hacks that offend against the Party Line lose their jobs and are then unemployable.
“.. in Davos in January of 2005, Eason Jordan (a top CNN guy) made the mistake of telling his fellow elite what was really happening in Iraq: American forces were “out to get journalists, and some were deliberately targeting journalists.”
Within two weeks, the longtime CNN honcho was out of work. His resignation came complete with a Stalin-esque confession that’s chilling to read today:
“After 23 years at CNN,” he wrote, “I have decided to resign in an effort to prevent CNN from being unfairly tarnished by the controversy over conflicting accounts of my recent remarks regarding the alarming number of journalists killed in Iraq. I never meant to imply U.S. forces acted with ill intent when U.S. forces accidentally killed journalists, and I apologize to anyone who thought I said or believed otherwise.”
See, The Brothers still have a lot to learn from America.
I thought the French homosexual horse-riding scene was the best bit of the movie by far….
Dear Mango,
Losing your job beats getting killed…white vaned…beaten up….abducted…etc…ever heard of Lasantha…Eknaligoda…just to name a few?
Most Sri Lankans don’t give a flying f**k about the people you mentioned.
I don’t either ;)
Dear Pres DB,
I (and the whole world) knows about Lasantha, Eknaligoda, Taraki and many others who were undoubtedly victims of GoSL-connected hit squads. As I wrote earlier, “Americans [& NATO] tend to kill foreign journalist outside of the US, where their deaths can be blamed on collateral damage.”
Tomislav Mitrovi?, programme director of Serbian TV channel RTS was killed as part of NATO’s strategy to “degrade” the Yugoslav government’s “ability to transmit their version of the news.” (NATO briefing, April 2000).
Who needs white vans when you’ve got access to F117 Stealth bombers?
Sri Lanka still has a long, long way to go before it ever matches the West in causing massive civilian casualties. I think the West has definitely and unquestionably beaten Sri Lanka – in the civilian casualties body count. By my count, by at least 1.3 million casualties.
http://thecarthaginiansolution.wordpress.com/2011/02/13/sri-lanka-can-never-beat-the-west/
Well said. No need to include all the west – the USA itself will do – 2 million Vietnamese civilians killed.
I know February has only 28 days, but is Indi satisfied with a mere 11 posts a month?
no
Three new posts. You’re wonderful!
I actually agree with everything you said. I think the writer was too much of a beginner and the producer was way too fresh. Neither of them knew what they were doing and though they told me I was the main character, after the movie was cut it was super unclear. lol My favorite part of what you wrote though was this, “colonials show up in a semi-modern truck, dressed like French homosexuals, riding horses on paved roads” lolololololol dude I laughed out loud at how funny that was. I told them a million times their outfits were all wrong but no one really wanted to listen.
Anyway all in all it was a great experience and I am grateful for the experience and those involved in putting me on. But I have to say your evaluation of the film is spot on. I loved it. Really funny too.
But overall the film had a great response and people really liked it. So I guess I have to say to myself, “don’t sweat the small stuff”. I am probably gonna catch a lot of flack for this, but oh well.
I always say whats on my mind.
D