Ponmuttayidunna Tharavu

A story that personifies village life. Let me not talk about the story in the movie but rather give you an idea of it. This is a very complex movie to express in words.. but an easy one to watch !! Simple yet entertaining. All the characters are played well and are realistic. People helping each other, neighbours envious of each other, gulf malayali all make up various character types. The central character of "Thattan Bhaskaran" is played by sreenivasan here.. a simple goldsmith who is in love with the girl next door Urvashi. He is prepared to go to any extent to marry her.. which kind of offsets his life ! Sreenivasan himself scripts the movie. He initially wanted Mohan lal to play the goldsmith but later was convinced by the director Satyan anthikad that lal would add too much weight to the simple character and that he himself should play the character. A special mention goes out to Jagathy sreekumar the Vellichappad.... who is really amazing in this movie. This movie has lot of side characters who give commendable performances and also leave us rib-tickled :)))) - Mamkukhoya, Shankaradi, Oduvil Unnikrishnan, KPAC Lalitha.

I just saw the genre marked for this film everywhere as a romantic comedy. While I can't say it's wrong to call it that and can't say it is any other genre, it still feels weird to call it that. If dissected, the story and a lot of the situations may feel problematic but the film never asks us to take it too seriously. It has a pleasant flow to it in spite of a lot of moments in the story that should usually create more tension. The almost idealistic village setting despite the various characters who shows a lot of different shades became a trope afterwards and even Sathyan Anthikkad himself fails to make it as believable afterwards like his earlier films like these. Thattan Bhaskaran is a character that is representative of all the guys in Kerala who has lost their love mostly due to petty reasons but here he is given a chance to get over it even in front of the eyes of all the village and who else to play it other than Sreenivasan, the icon of the most common unremarkable men in Kerala. A lot of characters are at the edge of becoming problematic creations but Raghunath Paleri's script is brilliant in just making them entertaining and not something more than that to be really problematic. It's really amazing that this film still holds up so much.

7.5 don't mind watching it again but It's a long wait until you see the twist at the end, till then it's a drag.