Mohanlal

There is a special kind of eccentric movies we get to see mostly in Tamil that just wants to be loud at all points. To name a couple, I would say movies like VSOP, Trisha Illana Nayanthara etc. Sajid Yahiya’s first movie Idi was supposed to be a spoof that ended up in a no man’s land. Looking at his new movie Mohanlal, it seems like the guy’s idea of entertainment is just loud comedy. Made on a wafer thin plot and clocking at a butt numbing 165 minutes, Mohanlal is pretty much an insult to the actor.

Meenakshi aka Meenu is our main protagonist. She is an ardent Mohanlal fan who collected his photos in growing up years and she watches almost all movies of Mohanlal from the theatre on the first day itself. She is married to Sethumadhavan who loved her from the childhood itself. The fan inside Meenakshi was so hardcore that it started causing issues in the married life of this couple and the movie Mohanlal is about such issues and how it all gets resolved eventually.

Sajid Yahiya’s story here tries to cover up the pile of illogical things his protagonist does using an emotional condition. But what Meenu has done in this movie or how she reacts or how Sethu handles situation cannot be covered using just that excuse. The moment a scene happens one can easily guess how Meenu is going to screw up everything. We have seen many “fan” films in the past and much like most of them this one is also trying to dance with the fans rather than telling the rest about why they love a particular star. On one particular scene a bunch of fans goes to the hospital to give blood and when the nurse asks which blood group they have, the answer is that “we all have only one group and that’s Lalettan.” Seriously? That’s the answer you give when a nurse asks for blood? With cheesy stuff like these, Sajid Yahiya again makes a confused genre mix like Idi.

Manju Warrier’s Meenakshi is supposed to be eccentric, but her portrayal of the character goes far too away from the level one would expect and ends up as an annoying caricature. Indrajith Sukumaran is perhaps the only actor who tries to ground the character and he was okay in his character. About other members in the cast, I don’t know whether to blame them or the characterization. Aju Varghese has a relevant role in the movie and his performance is gimmicky. Salim Kumar, Hareesh Kanaran and Soubin Shahir etc. are actually a burden for the movie in the name of comedy.

Sajid’s idea of entertainment is packaging rather than having an engaging story. The predictable and bland screenplay by Suneesh Varanad gets a treatment that might not even please hardcore fans. It’s really difficult to sit through a movie that claims to be an emotional story of a fan, but looks like an unintentional comedy. The screenplay is pointlessly throwing characters into the movie to create fun and stuff like that was what made me compare this movie to those tacky Tamil films. There is one scene where Meenakshi kicks a goon and he flies away and she says a punch dialogue and all you can do is facepalm. The music by Tony Joseph was good.

Mohanlal was a disappointing and somewhat a torturing experience for me. The shallowness in the writing, the desperation to be an entertainer and the same old excuses for worshipping makes this movie a mess.

Rating: 1.5/5