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Tourist Family centres around a Sri Lankan family – led by Dharmadas (M Sasikumar), who’s travelled to seek refuge in India, with the help of his wife, Vasanthi’s (Simran), brother, Prakash (Yogi Babu), with a view to claiming they came from Tamilnadu – which they later change to Kerala, attempting to fake the dialect and ingratiate themselves, unnoticed.
However, thanks to the ineptness of the latter, they immediately get caught by the cops, and are on their way to jail, but after younger son Mulli (Kamalesh) spins a line about that situation means he’s unable to look after their dog – since they’re now homeless, can the Chief of police look after it, instead?
There’s a fairly neat explanation about how that comes about, so I’ll leave that for you to discover.
This does feel like I’m watching two separate films, since the first half is where all the comedy comes, such as how after escaping the cops, Prakash has arranged for them to stay in a house where their landlady is married to… the police inspector!
Similarly, Mulli gets a lift from the neighbour to school, the latter turning out to be the teacher, with Mulli not letting on that that’s where he’s going, until they arrive… like that wouldn’t have been established BEFORE setting off? Especially, given the time of day he’s asking for a lift?
However, while I’m just a pasty white bloke, the mostly Indian audience were guffawing at a lot of things, some of which I figured were based on how people behave culturally, so I sort of got what they were laughing at, but it didn’t register as a big laugh for me. Once of these came when the family were given a flask of drink as a welcoming gift, with their landlady asking, “Did they bring tumblers?”
You’d think that joke was the Second Coming, the way it was received.
But as we get into the second half, it picks up a moment from the first half, where a bomb had gone off in a dumpster, but the new family can’t have done that, surely? The cops think so, or are they just setting them up? Plus, when the police brutally beat a suspect, it all makes for such an uneven film.
Plus, as Part 2 brings in tales from the rest of the community, getting too syrupy sweet in parts, and all we really have left is about 20 mins of decent content, with a ton of padding.
Elsewhere in the film, despite mixing their language with English, at one point, the daughter clearly says “What the fuck?”, yet the subtitles say, “What the heck?”
Perhaps it’s unsurprising that I learned AFTER watching this that it was originally classified as a 15-cert, due to strong language, but that was toned down so it would pass for a 12A. I don’t like censorship, but I can see this is more of a family film, and it’s the lower-cert version that is in UK cinemas. Plus, I don’t see how a few more f-words would’ve improved the film.
NOTE: There are no mid- or post-credits scenes.
Tourist Family is in cinemas now, but isn’t yet available to pre-order on Blu-ray or DVD. However, once announced, it will appear on the New DVD Blu-ray 3D and 4K releases UK list.
Detailed specs:
Cert: 
Running time: 128 minutes
Release date: May 9th 2025
Studio: Bleecker Street
Aspect Ratio: 2.39:1 (ARRIRAW (4.5K))
Cinema: Odeon Trafford Centre
Rating: 5/10
Director: Abishan Jeevinth
Producers: Yuvaraj Ganesan, Mageshraj Pasilian, Nazerath Pasilian
Screenplay: Abishan Jeevinth
Music: Sean Roldan
Cast:
Dharmadas: M Sasikumar
Vasanthi: Simran
Nithusan: Mithun Jai Shankar
Mulli: Kamalesh
Prakash: Yogi Babu
Richard: MS Bhaskar
Gunasekar: Kumaravel
Raghavan: Bagavathi Perumal
Police Constable Murugan: S Rajapandi
Bhairavan: Ramesh Thilak
M. Sasikumar: Sreeja Ravi
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.