Nunakkuzhi Review | A Hilariously Packed Situational Comedy With Top-Notch Performances

There is one hospital sequence in the second half of the new Jeethu Joseph film  Nunakkuzhi featuring Basil Joseph, Baiju, Grace Antony, Azees Nedumangad, and Aju Varghese. It was a fairly lengthy sequence happening in one location, and the entire scene was a laugh riot. Like how Jeethu Joseph said during the film’s promotional interviews, situational humor can go horribly wrong if the meter is slightly off. But with a tight script and superb performers in almost every character,  Nunakkuzhi manages to make its audience laugh out loud almost from the word go.

Eby is the son of a wealthy businessman, and he has been forced to be the MD of his father’s company. One day, the income tax officers came for a raid in his office, and as part of the procedure, they decided to seize Eby’s laptop. Some of the sensitive contents inside that laptop were so important that getting it back at the earliest was essential to save Eby’s marriage. Efforts of Eby to get that laptop back and how that leads to a chain reaction of events is what we see in Jeethu Joseph’s Nunakkuzhi.

If you try to analyze the script of Nunakkuzhi written by K.R. Krishna Kumar, one can see that there isn’t a single scene with no relevance. Every detail you hear very casually is used again at a later stage, and when it is used, the context becomes funnier, and you will find yourself laughing at the characters for the troubles they invited. It is almost like they are applying a certain formula to make things unpredictable in a funnier way. Even though the movie might feel like a wafer-thin idea, nothing in the script is added without any purpose, and the intertwining makes things even more hilarious.

Even though the character of Eby is in the comfort zone of Basil Joseph, it doesn’t feel like he is sleepwalking through the character. The comedy timing of Basil is impeccable, and not many actors can pull off eccentric characterizations effectively. Grace Antony is in her element, and her performance in those hospital sequences was top-notch. Actor Baiju Santhosh was the show stealer, with his typical style perfectly working in favor of this movie. There is a parallel track in the film featuring actors Siddique, Manoj K Jayan, Althaf Salim, and Binu Pappu. All of them, especially Siddique, were superb in performing the humor bits without overdoing it. Aju Varghese, Nikhila Vimal, Swasika, Saiju Kurup, Azees Nedumnagad, Lenaa, etc., are the other major names in the star cast.

In his associations with Dileep, Jeethu Joseph had proven that he has a fairly good judgment on comedy. While the humor we saw in his previous comedy films had a slightly slapsticky nature, here, it is completely situational. And like I already said, it is the tightly packed script that stays focused on the main theme that helps this film. And Jeethu Joseph has managed to squeeze out the best performance from almost every actor on the screen. The crucial comedy scene that I mentioned in the beginning, runs for almost 20 minutes. And it is the quality of the writing and performances that really holds your attention. The edits make sure that the flow of the humor is not lost.

Nunakkuzhi is a comedy entertainer whose graph never really goes down. With each scene surprising the audience by making things more and more complicated and comical, the film ultimately becomes a laugh-out-loud package. With a superb cast, making almost every line in the flick funny,  Nunakkuzhidelivers on what it promised.