Kadal Kadannu Oru Maathukutty

The movies Pranchiyettan and Indian Rupee where good satires that visualized the inferiority complex, ego and greediness of human beings in a very realistic way. When film maker Ranjith returns to the director’s chair with his new movie Kadal Kadannu Oru Maathukutty, what really missing is the freshness in content. Even though the maker manages to keep the movie in a real zone, the lack of sharpness in sarcasms and irrelevant plot elements makes this film quite underwhelming.

The movie basically revolves around our title protagonist Mathew aka Maathukutty. He lives in Germany along with his wife and two kids. His wife is a nurse and Mathew is unemployed. The Malayali association there plans to conduct a grand program on their silver jubilee celebration and assigns the jobless Mathukutty, the task of convincing  any big Malayalam movie star to participate in the event. Mathukutty’s arrival here and the events that happen afterwards is what this movie talks about.

By the end of the first half of the film you will surely feel the lack of natural humor that the director always created with his dialogues and situations. Everyone expects Ranjith to crack them with some realistic humor. But throughout the film, there is a lack of it and that annoys the rhythm of this movie. The greedy game of the social setup was presented practically but the reason that lead to all these incidents was quite sloppy. The channel idea was really awkward. There is an unbaked romantic angle in the film that finds it hard to fit in. Many of the elements we have seen in Pranchiyettan get repeated here. Like the Malayali Association and its politics, the inferior feel of the title character and even the way that climax sequence (Association’s celebration) is narrated.

In the performance side, Mammootty is really wonderful as the NRI. The actor carries the role with ease and manages to keep it away from the Pranchiyettan image. Muthumani shines as his better half in her rough portrayal.   Alisha Mohammed is just about convincing in her scattered appearance. A slightly younger actor would have been a better choice in the role played by P Balachandran. Balachandra Menon doesn’t have much to do in this drama. An exaggerated role for Tini Tom. Nedumudi Venu, Nandhu, Shekhar Menon, Siddique, Harishree Ashokan and many others are there in the cast who did their part nicely.

In the making, I think Ranjith have done the direction part decently. But the film fails in the scripting. The particular conflict zone created by the writer was very weak that we don’t get something that will make an impact on us. Because of this, the rest of the events look very dull. The dialogs as usual has that typical style of the director, but sadly there isn’t much to keep you excited. Madhu Neelakandan’s cinematography is really good and the cuts were also fine. The German feel in the BGM’s were good. The music was just about ok.

Overall this Ranjith film is just an average meal that scores with performances and some occasional sarcasm on society. My rating for Kadal Kadannu Oru Maathukutty is a 2.5/5. The cameos by Mohanlal, Jayaram and Dileep will please you in this festive season, but on the whole Maathukutty looks like an extension of C E Francis.