Aanandam Paramanandam marks the comeback of director Shafi and scriptwriter M Sindhuraj after a small break of almost 3 years. Both of them were creative minds who faced set back due to their inability to update their craft according to the changes that happened to the audience. Unsurprisingly and sadly, this new outing of the duo is also an outdated package that wants to be funny and preachy. With the kind of humor that sounds like it was added during the dubbing, Aanandam Paramanandam is a well-made sleeping pill.
Divakara Kurup is a retired postman who has a drinking issue. His alcohol addiction has actually affected his family life, and he doesn’t want something similar to happen to his daughter. But unfortunately, his daughter Anupama, out of anger, decides to marry Girish, a man who also has an alcohol addiction. Divakara Kurup’s master plan to save his daughter’s life by fixing Girish’s alcohol addiction is what we see in Aanandam Paramanandam.
The one line for Sindhuraj’s script is a thread with potential. Father trying to help his daughter by making a big plan to make his son-in-law leave alcohol. But when it comes to reaching this conflict and then resolving this conflict, Sindhuraj has no ideas with him. He is looking at everything around this conflict as an opportunity to squeeze in comedy sequences and toddy shop dance celebrations. After exposing what the script wants to cater to the audience, the movie has nothing left in it to entice the viewer.
Indrans, as Divakara Kurup, is given a central role in the film. While it is indeed a pleasure to see Indrans as the hero of a Shafi film, the role is not at all challenging the caliber of the actor in him. Sharaf U Dheen plays the role of Girish, the son-in-law. There is a standard way Sharaf plays comedy, and that performance style is repeated here as well. Thinkalazhacha Nishchayam fame Anagha plays the female lead of the movie, and I would say her role in Vaashi, which had a lesser screen time was more memorable and challenging than this one. Aju Varghese is seen in a full-length role after a long time. Baiju Santhosh, Vanitha Krishna Chandran, Harikrishnan, etc., are the other names in the star cast.
I have heard that a lot of the hilarious humor we have seen in movies like Kalyana Raman, Pulival Kalyanam, etc., was spontaneously created by the actors and writers while filming those movies. I somewhere feel Shafi as a filmmaker, is still hoping for such happy accidents to elevate his movies to the next level. The basic bullet point level writing by Sindhuraj is not getting any sort of elevation in the making aspect or in the performance part. The comedy is stuffed into the sequence as an easily removable accessory in most areas. Thanks to the way he hums, I never needed to see the credits to understand it was a Shaan Rahman musical.
Aanandam Paramanandam is the creation of a scriptwriter and a director who are reluctant to acknowledge that the reason for the failure of their last few releases was their ignorance about an evolved audience. If you have found Shafi’s Children’s Park or Sindhuraj’s Thattin Purath Achuthan remotely entertaining, there is a good chance that they might have made this movie keeping someone like you in mind.
With the kind of humor that sounds like it was added during the dubbing, Aanandam Paramanandam is a well-made sleeping pill.
Green: Recommended Content
Orange: The In-Between Ones
Red: Not Recommended
