The Crow’s Egg – Movie Review | But I Smile Anyway...

The Crow’s Egg – Movie Review

22 Oct 2016 32 Comments

by Ritu in Thoughts Opinions & Memories Tags: Blog, Blog Post, Blogger, Blogging, film, pizza, Poverty, review, Slum, The Crow's Egg

You know those days, when you aren’t well, and you sit there browsing the hundreds of channels, looking for something to watch. You’re tired of the boring repeats of sitcoms and cooking programmes, and all the other inane shows that are playing at that time.

Then something catches your eye, and you think you’ll give it a go… and it ends up being the best decision you made that day.

It happened to me today.

I had been reading, and my head was bursting with words I had read, so I switched on the TV. The kids were out, Hubby Dearest had gone to drop them to football training, and the house was silent.

And this film was playing. The Sky box gave me a prompt to start it at the beginning, and after reading the little info that you get on the screen, I thought “why not?”

This was how I discovered The Crow’s Egg, or Kaaka Muttai in Tamil.

A South Indian, tamil language (no, I can’t understand or speak Tamil, but the subtitles were great!) film about two young brothers who live in a Chennai slum with their mother and grandma, their father locked up in prison for an unknown crime, awaiting bail.

If you are expecting Slumdog Millionaire, there are a few similarities, like it is about two brothers, and they live in a slum. But it is a bit of a comedy, as well as a chance to view into the lives of the slum dwellers, and how they are viewed by the upper echelons of Indian society.

These two go daily to a tree, distract the crows, and then steal eggs, to ‘drink’ them. The family has no money spare so mum can’t afford to buy chickens eggs, so they figured this was the next best thing. They are known to all their friends as Crow’s Egg the Elder and Crow’s Egg the younger.

The land where their special tree is, gets sold to developers, so they, along with other slum friends, have nowhere to play.

As the days go by, a new pizza parlour is erected in this space, raising a lot of curiosity from the local children.

The film follows their journey to actually try and buy a pizza themselves. There are funny moments, cute moments, and some really sad moments within the film, showing how these innocent slum children are regarded by many.

Such a cute scene when the grandma tries to make them a pizza out of Dosa mix!

The boys are totally likeable. I found myself really willing them to get their pizza! Bless them, the things they did to earn money and scrape together 300 rupees to buy one! They didn’t want anyone’s pity, but fate lent a hand. How they got clean, new clothes… a classic scene!

Class and society divides, social media, poverty… only some of the issues covered in this light hearted film, but the message is delivered in a pleasing format.

I shan’t say too much more, if you are to watch the film, I don’t want to spoil the end, but you do end up hanging on to the edge of your seat, to see whether they ever get to try that elusive pizza!