Hello Mummy Review | Sharafudheen Shines in This Uneven Horror Comedy That Misses Its Potential

When you look at the movie Hello Mummy in its entirety, it is evident that the humor in the second act that shows the events in the married life of the lead pair made everyone associated with the movie go ahead with this subject. A man moving into his wife’s house after marriage, where the ghost of his mother-in-law exists, is a very catchy premise. While newcomer Vaishakh Elans managed to pull off that area of the movie convincingly, thanks to an effortless Sharafudheen, the earlier bits of the film and the exhausting climax are making the movie less original and more run-of-the-mill stuff.

Boney, our hero, is that typical young guy who has no interest in settling down and getting married. At one point, his brother-in-law suggests a girl named Stephy, and Boney agrees to meet her, hoping that their demand to have him live with them post-marriage will make his family stop proceeding with the alliance. But once Boney met Stephy, feelings were formed, and the marriage happened. The real drama begins when Boney realizes that Stephy’s Mummy’s ghost is living in that house. How he deals with that horrible reality is what we see in Hello Mummy.

In the early portions of the movie that lead to the marriage, which has the introduction of the hero, a romantic song, and the wedding song, the filmmaking is pretty glossy and a little bit sloppy. As I already said, once the marriage happens, writer Sanjo Joseph uses the possibilities very neatly to create some genuinely hilarious moments. Sanjo, who previously wrote Falimy, is succeeding in setting up a funny premise for the story. I really loved some of the reactions of Boney when he tries to trap the detective character played by Aju Varghese. As the post-wedding chaos starts to find an end, one could really see the film running out of options to entertain.

In the last act of the film, with the darkness and black magic, which demands a lot of set work and visual effects, the movie looks like a fantasy tale, but the drama isn’t that gripping. Vaishakh and Sanjo are trying to reduce the tiresomeness of the narrative in that part with some Bindu Panicker humor in between. But since the beats of that whole portion are very familiar, the duration feels a lot longer, and the movie starts to feel tedious. Vyshakh Elans, who has done ad films before filmmaking, is trying to give a vibrant visual texture to the movie. Since the horror comedy fantasy aspect is there, the vibrancy coupled with wide lenses gives that peculiar look to this movie. The song placements weren’t that great. Even though the visual effects looked good considering the fantasy space of the movie, the production design, especially for the final episode of the movie, wasn’t that great.

In the portion that works really well for the flick, Sharafudheen is on a roll, and the man’s natural way of delivering mumbling counter dialogues, along with those subtle expression changes, just makes some of the scenes extremely hilarious. For some reason, when I saw him in certain patches of the movie, I thought somebody should make a 96-like rooted love story using him. In the interviews, Aishwarya Lekshmi admitted that comedy isn’t her zone and she has left it to the experienced people when it came to Hello Mummy. Well, the character of Stephy was never in that comical space. But the dialogue delivery from Aishwarya mostly had this mugged-up feel, and it kind of stood out whenever her character became angry. Johny Antony managed to find the perfect sync with the kind of comedy the movie wanted to show. Adhri Joe and Joemon Jyothir were basically insignificant sidekicks with less screen time. Jagadish was fine in his character. Bindhu Panicker, Aju Varghese, Ganga Meera, Sruthy Suresh, etc., were the other names in the cast. Even though it wasn’t an extensive role, “Sandeep Bhaiyya,” aka Sunny Hindhuja, looked convincing as the antagonist on screen, and it was good to see him speak in his own voice.

Thanks to a brilliant Sharafudheen, the area that attracted everyone when they saw the trailer, the encounter between Boney and Mummy, looks really funny on screen. And the movie sort of explores some of the practical chores to make that area of the story hilarious. Unfortunately, the story is forced to opt for some of the cliched external help in order to have a final showdown, and that somewhere reduces the charm it could have had if they had explored something that would stay close to the strict mummy we saw in the movie.