Oru Visheshapetta Biriyanikissa

Oru Visheshapetta Biriyanikissa had that potential to be the sweet typical vintage Malayalam movie. Much like the old Sathyan Anthikkadu films, this one has a place named Velappan Chavadi at the center of all the developments. But Kiran Narayanan can’t conceive the idea in an engaging way by connecting all the subplots to give us that flow of events and thus this fantasy feel good movie ends up being a disappointment.

Velappan Chavadi is this village which has a famous Mosque that has this ritual of giving Biriyani to the locals on every Sunday. But the cook who used to do that, passed away one day and the villagers had no clue on how to move forward. Thara, who is a widow, steps in at that point to take up the responsibility. The interesting things that happen after Thara taking up the position of the chief cook are what Oru Visheshappetta Biriyanikissa narrating.

It has these fantasy elements like angels in its narrative. I must say that the film began very interestingly with English speaking Angels, humor textured presentation of the back story behind the Biriyani ritual and some detailing about the major characters. But when the movie decided to look into the lives of the numerous characters, the screenplay suddenly becomes disjoint. Some of the subplots in the film weren’t at all adding up to the context. There is character played by Joju George who comes in and goes out without causing any trouble to the equation of the movie. Kiran Narayanan’s idea was to take the movie to that place where he will have a climax of Thara making the tastiest Biriyani in the world and people appreciating her for that. But the path he chose to reach that point was bumpy.

Lena plays the key role of Thara in the film. Till the interval point she has very minimal dialogues and it is in the second half of the film where she gets some space to perform. And why is she always in the same costume? Nedumudi Venu, Sreeraman, Mamukoya and Sunil Sukhada were natural and fine in their respective roles. The cast of this movie is really elaborate. The other major supporting roles are played by Vinod Kovoor, Seenath, Surabhi Lakshmi, Nobi, Bhagath Manuel and Joju George. Aju Varghese, Vinay Forrt, Lal and Bhavana have done minimal cameos for the movie.

Kiran Narayanan is trying to use his simple story to touch many emotional aspects of human behavior. The misogynistic eyes of the society towards a widow, emotional insecurities of people etc. get mentioned in the story. But the desperation of the script to make things funny and become a replica of, say a film like Ponmuttayidunna Tharavu, makes the narration look artificial and that squeezes out the originality from the film. Cinematography of the film was neat. The music was pathetic while the background score was fine.

Oru Visheshapetta Biriyanikissa is one movie where you feel sad that the film was disappointing instead of hating it. On a DVD watch, with play, pause and skip options, this one might be a passable 2 hour long film.

Rating: 2/5