In Vyasanasametham Bandhumithradhikal, debut director S Vipin is trying to crack this funeral comedy genre. The idea of every event leading to a major showdown where someone in the family eventually decides to take control is somewhat familiar to us. The recent examples are the Lijo Jose Pellissery film Ee Ma Yau and Chidambaram’s Jan E Man. Unlike these two films I mentioned, Vyasanasametham Bandhumithradhikal is trying to be funny in a deliberate way. And because of that, we have sequences that are created for the sake of things being funny rather than happening organically. With several setups getting a payoff towards the end of the film, Vyasanasametham Bandhumithradhikal works in parts.
So, from the title itself, you can understand that the backdrop of the movie is a funeral. Savithriyamma, the grandmother of Anjali, dies a week before Anjali’s engagement. As the family plans to conduct her funeral on the house’s premises, several issues arise from inside and outside. With many people with many intentions and many opinions in the same place, the stage gets set for chaos. How this all culminates is what we see in Vyasanasametham Bandhumithradhikal.
Produced by Vipin Das, who wrote Vaazha and directed Guruvayoor Ambalanadayil, the texture of this movie is in a similar zone. The initial portions of this movie are actually the dull ones. The screenplay here is a smart one. There are a lot of minute elements that are passed to us through either dialogues or visuals that become an integral element to the final confusion as the story progresses. But in between, they are stretching or overdoing certain things, which makes it a drag. Even though fun is the primary layer and intention of the movie, it is also a political film, and hence, you can’t really approach it like a no-brainer CID Moosa. The problem was that while some of the jokes are placed brilliantly, there are these overly improvised ones that go to the Guruvayoor Ambalanadayil zone of things.
Anaswara Rajan is in her established comfort zone of being an agitated young girl who is about to get married. This is almost becoming her thing, just like how Ranbir Kapoor used to leave home in every film a few years ago. Siju Sunny is also pretty much repeating himself, and the character doesn’t land smoothly. Joemon Jyothir, on the other hand, manages to crack the character, especially in the second half. Noby Markose got a character that was different from the type of character he used to do, and that casting felt fresh. I think, in terms of impact, the most memorable performance would be the one by Aziz Nedumangadu. In a way, the movie is basically showing the transformation of that one character and he was really good at pulling it off. Baiju as the Karayogam guy was in his usual rugged elements. There are several other names in this high-pitch comedy and some of them were really good while a lot of them just remained loud.
S Vipin’s idea is pretty interesting when you look at how the writing manages to use all those seemingly insignificant details to create a chain of comedy. There is one casual moment in the film, where one character assumes that Siju Sunny’s character is a relative. But that detail is leading the way to a really hilarious moment in the climax. I felt that the build-up they give to certain scenes was the issue. For instance, towards the end, for one particular humor to work, you need police in the picture. But to bring the police into the picture, they are going after an aunty comedy, which felt like an extremely overdone one. It almost felt like they took the liberty of exaggerated humor to bridge the gaps between certain genuinely funny moments.
Vyasanasametham Bandhumithradhikal is not a movie that just wants to be a collage of random comedy scenes. They are trying to give purpose to every scene to make the larger picture a lot more funnier. But at times, the efforts to be funny distract the movie from its core, and it feels either repetitive or overdone. In totality, this movie is a passable collection of hits and misses.
