Malayalam cinema has rarely ventured with confidence into adult comedy. It has often skirted the genre or reduced it to crude wordplay. ‘Spa,’ directed by Abrid Shine, marks a more deliberate attempt to explore the terrain. It is provocative in idea but unexpectedly playful in execution.
Set almost entirely within a massage parlour, ‘Spa’ uses the space less as a site of titillation and more as a lens to examine male desire, entitlement, and fantasy. The timing of the film’s release lends it an added charge: massage parlours across Kerala, particularly in Thiruvananthapuram, have been under sustained public and police scrutiny. There has been a blurring of lines between wellness, suspicion, and moral panic. Shine’s film does not attempt a sociological treatise, but it is clearly interested in how such spaces became loaded with anxiety and projection.
What distinguishes ‘Spa’ is its refusal to lean into vulgarity. Malayalam cinema’s earlier forays into adult humour, especially in the Omar Lulu school of comedies, have often relied on relentless double entendres and an easy misogyny. Shine chooses a lighter, more observational approach. The humour here arises less from explicit jokes than from the awkwardness, vulnerability, and sometimes absurd seriousness with which men approach their fantasies.
Structurally, the film recalls ‘Action Hero Biju,’ with a steady stream of characters passing through a single location. Each reveals a sliver of social behaviour. Men who take women for granted, men seeking validation, men mistaking desire for entitlement, etc. They all drift in and out of the spa. Importantly, the women who work there are not treated as silent props. The therapists and receptionists bring energy and agency to the narrative and often puncture male pretensions with wit and restraint.
The ensemble cast keeps the tone buoyant. Dhinesh Prabhakar, Alexander Prasanth and Vineeth Thattil slip comfortably into their roles. Radhika lends the film a quiet emotional anchor, adding depth without overstating it.
Ishaan Chhabra’s music complements the film’s breezy rhythm. It favours mood over emphasis. Spa may not land every idea it toys with, but as an experiment, it is more thoughtful than sensational. It is an adult comedy that trusts suggestion over shock and humour over noise.