Sree Dhanya Catering Service

I must say that while I was watching the film Sree Dhanya Catering Service, I had a really good laugh, almost similar to the experience of watching Jo and Jo in theaters. The movie is somewhat Jeo Baby’s deliberate attempt to walk away from the political filmmaker tag, and yet he can’t do that, and there is a minimalistic yet evident track that tries to address the women’s perspective. But there is a vagueness to that angle of the movie. If those subplots in the film had a better shape, Sree Dhanya Catering Service would have been a highly entertaining political film.

The film is about Shinu’s kid’s birthday celebration. He runs a catering service, and his wife’s name is given to that venture. On the day before the birthday, he expresses his wish to cook biriyani for the guests, and his neighbor Sibi tells him they can cook the whole thing at Sibi’s house since his wife and kid are not there. Things that unfold when all these men gather to make a biriyani for 100 people are what we see in Sree Dhanya Catering Service.

The setting of the movie is somewhere similar to Sanal Kumar Sasidharan’s Ozhivu Divasathe Kali on a wireframe level. But the emphasis here is more on being entertaining than enlightening. To an extent, one can call Sree Dhanya Catering Service an unconventional film since it isn’t following a familiar structure. The visualization of the movie, for the fun part, gives the audience an onlooker perspective, and I have to say that I laughed a lot seeing the banter among the drunkards. It is actually the political layer that needed more refinement. While the auto driver’s love and the moment where the rider gets a mechanic where tracks that have a sense of depth, most of the female tracks are given an ambiguous ending.

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Jeo Baby knows how to keep the film interesting for the audience on a making level. The way the conversations unfold in the movie is hilarious and engaging. Even when the movie shifts to the Kunjila Mascillamani track, which feels like a deliberately added track to talk politics, there is an element of humor within that track. The cinematography by Salu K Thomas uses these handheld frames by zooming in and out to make us feel the chaos, and the movie slips into steady and static frames when calmer events are happening. The music was really nice, especially that slow track, which fitted into the chaos around it so neatly.

On the performance side, there are so many faces here who are performing very naturally. Prasant Murali as Shinoy in that Pala slang was flowing smoothly as the character, and his arguments with the Aliyan from Kozhikode played by Kumar were really hilarious. Kumar deserves a special mention for not overdoing the Kozhikode slang for the sake of comedy. Anna Fathima as the vlogger with that authentic Vadakara slang, was really good. Jeo Baby as Sibi was memorable. Moor, Rahul Reghu, Josey Sijo, Saheer Mohammed, Phantom Praveen, etc., are some of the names in the elaborate supporting cast who did a neat job on screen.

As a situational comedy, Sree Dhanya Catering Service works immensely. But the political tweaks that were intended to give shape to this movie have a sense of vagueness. If the female character-oriented subplots were a little more refined, Sree Dhnaya Catering Service would have been a brilliant film that blended politics and humor smartly.