Ammakkoru Tharattu

At one point in the movie writer director Sreekumaran Thampi makes fun of the modern day serials. But when we watch his new movie Ammakkoru Tharattu, we will find the movie as a close competitor to these daily soaps. With an extremely dramatic script that tries desperately to narrate the same old preachy story with nonsensical exaggerations, Ammakkoru Tharattu from the veteran is a hugely disappointing preachy movie.

The basic focus of the movie is this widow named Sudarshana (I hope the name is correct). Her two sons who are highly reputed in the society find it difficult to manage their mother in her old age. The only daughter who is under the torture of her husband also can’t help this mother. The tragic things happening to her and how all this events lead to a beautiful climax when her ex lover, who now is a renowned lyricist, came for her rescue is what Ammakkoru Tharattu discussing.

As one of the guys among the audience said in the interval, this movie should have been made in the 70’s where Madhu and Sharadha used to play these characters that are extremely dramatic. Now with cinema changing his approach, the dialogues written by Mr. Sreekumaran Thampi looks unreal. No offence to the seniors in the movie, but I must say that the only two actors who could give a convincing output on screen were Sai Kumar and Manikandan Pattambi.  The usual sentiments we see in those old movies are again showed here through characters played by Suraj Venjaramoodu and some more actors.

Mange the actors nobody was finding it easy to handle the dramatic scenes and dialogues. As I said, only Sai Kumar and Manikandan Pattambi took some effort to make the characters look realistic. Every other character was in this exaggerated grey tone that can give you a headache. The actress who played the role of Sai Kumar’s wife and Lakshmi Gopalaswami were pathetic with their performances.

In the making, the ideology Sreekumaran Thambi wants to put forward is too shallow in terms of presentation. It is almost like some of those sloppy NFDC documentary films which we see before films that preaches you in an utterly boring way. Lack of research about the lifestyle of youngsters surely makes those portions in the movie which discusses about their attitude, a street drama. Dialogues are extremely dramatic. Cinematography and edits were disappointing. Outdated background score and usual Sreekumaran Thampi music with quality lyrics.

Overall I was bored to death by this family drama, which is almost a two and a half hour long daily soap. My rating for Ammakkoru Tharattu is 1.5/5.