Homely Meals

Homely meals from director Anoop Kannan is a too ambitious film that talks about having ambitions in life. Inspiring people by showing the hard work is not a subject that is unfamiliar to us. Beginning with the same kind of drama that we have seen in Udayanaanu Tharam, homely meals written by Vipin Atley is an average cinema with some unique moments of humour.

The story is about this film obsessed guy Alan. His desire is to be a film maker by being unique in concepts. The search for a space in the industry wasn’t easy for him. One day his friend happens to hear his concept about a new TV program and agrees to help him in making it and telecasting it through the channel where he was working. Some foul plays happen and things again go out of Alan’s hands. How Alan fights back against the odds in front of him is what the movie telling us.

The first and throughout disturbing factor of the movie for me was the art. The story starts at 2002 and the materials you see on screen don’t look like that. Computers are old, but the software’s are new.  Mobile phones, flex hoardings and how easily the green screen was changed to a stunning background in a less than 12 hours long video making etc are certain things someone who looks for perfection would easily find unconvincing. I am not saying that I was dissecting the movie that sharply. But these mistakes were abundant. Coming to the story, the thrill and excitement they want to cater is strictly for a very small audience who is interested in the film making process and even them will find certain portions as a bit exaggerated or heavily dramatic. Some really good humour is there is the film which made the small audience in the big theatre laugh. Aamir Khan scene, Babu Antony dance, Shakeela’s tears, Alan fooling the channel head with computer terminologies etc were really hilarious.

Anoop Kannan, who previously directed Jawan of Vellimala has tried to be unique with his script selection. But when it comes to making, I don’t think he has done complete justice to the story. This kind of an ambitious story needed a more humorous narrative that approaches the story with less melodrama. In the second half, Homely Meals becomes too cheesy. The basic plot of this Vipin Atley script is simple and guessable. But certain plot ingredients were fresh. Dialogues are conventional. Cinematography was okay. Edits showed hiccup. BGM was nice and the music was average. Art was really poor.

Vipin Atley looked perfect to be Alan as he wasn’t that conventional hero material. He has the potential to be a character actor. Srinda was okay in her character. It was a nice performance from Neeraj. Manoj K Jayan did his antagonist part nicely (That AIR intro was damn funny). Kailash, Rajesh Sharma, Sasi Kalinga and many more are there in the film with small roles.

Overall Homely Meals is average. The 162 minutes run time makes it a bit hard to tolerate. The Facebook micro observers will definitely find a lot of technical faults ones the DVD releases. The rating is 2.5/5. This Homely meals won’t give any trouble to your stomach but it lacks the yummy factor.