Vellimoonga

It has a platform which many flop films had in the past and an unconventional hero heroine equation. Even with these odds Vellimoonga succeeds in becoming a clean entertainer by having creative humor all over the script. Cinematographer Jibu Jacob’s debut directorial venture Vellimoonga is an extremely pleasing look back to conventional Malayalam cinema.

The story is about this 40+ aged politician Mamachan. Situations showed him the value of Kadhar and the cunning Mamachan uses it smartly for his political growth. Marriage was something that didn’t happen to Mamachan due to various reasons. The movie basically focuses on that one phase of Mamachan’s life where he is trying to win in both political and personal game.

The film starts of slowly with the jokes not being totally hilarious. But very soon it attains momentum and starts to offer this clean and humorous story of Mamachan. One good thing about this film is that it’s a story that doesn’t try to preach about being good. Our central protagonist is crooked and so is every other character. There is one hilarious back story to Mamachan’s love track. The presentation of Mamachan’s political play to attain his goal is also impressive. Being too conventional at times was the only negative in my view.

It was nice to see Biju Menon in this vellimoonga character. The character demands his glamour, age and unique comic timing and the actor has done a fabulous job. Aju Varghese was really good in performing the humor. The repartee between these characters will leave you in splits. Sasi Kalnga, Pashaanam Shaji, Tiny Tom, Sunil Sukhada, Lena and Siddique make the performance of the supporting cast impressive. Leading lady Nikki Galrani doesn’t have much to do. Nice little cameo by Asif Ali.

In the making Jibu Jacob has done justice to the script written by Joji Thomas. Script doesn’t have any large scale of cheesy drama and the director has tried to keep it like that. And also the humor is in that sensible level so that it looks less comical. Script offers a lot of fun moments. The romance of Mamachan is a bit odd, but we won’t feel anything icky about it at the end. Nice cinematography. Edits were okay. Good bgm. Music was fine.

Coming with a lighter baggage of expectation, Vellimoonga surprised me a lot. It’s almost like watching a Sathyan Anthikkadu film (kindly look into his recent filmography) without any preach. The rating is 3.5/5 for this fun film. BTW, that “Laa Lee Laa Lee le….” scene was damn funny.