Ann Maria Kalippilaanu

Ann Maria Kalippilaanu from Midhun Manuel Thomas is a preachy feel good entertainer soaked in enjoyable humor. Unlike the last movie Aadu from the director, there are no overdone humor tracks in this simple movie and with a runtime of just around two hours; Ann Maria Kalippilaanu from Midhun Manuel Thomas is a passable movie with enough ingredients to please you.

Ann Maria is this fourth standard student and her parents are doctors. She has this desire to win a medal for the long jump event in the school sports meet. But an unfortunate turn of events puts the PT teacher against her. After facing the humiliation from that teacher, furious Ann Maria is in search for a plan to take revenge on her teacher. What all she does to get that and how it all goes is what Ann Maria Kalippilaanu dealing with.

Well it is fundamentally a children’s movie with enough for the adults to enjoy. Like most of the child oriented movies, there is this bed time story like concepts of angels and positivity surrounded around the theme. What Midhun Manuel Thomas has done is he dipped the whole theme in a kind of humor he is good at. The sort of quirkiness we have witnessed in his previous writings like Om shanthi Oshana and Aadu is also there and that gives the movie the pleasing humorous outlook. And unlike his previous directorial venture, there is no over written stretched out comedy sub plots in this movie and the film mostly stays close to its theme.

Sara Arjun is all grown up and the girl is still damn good in expressing. I never felt any sort of jitter in her portrayal of Ann Maria and if the performance was dubbed, my token of appreciation to the girl who dubbed as well. Sunny Wayne shows improvement in having a bit more range of expressions on his face rather than the typical badass attitude (Special mention to that fall after the Fox theme music). Aju Varghese gets a character with fair enough importance and has done a good job in delivering the humor perfectly. The chemistry of him and Sunny was also fun to watch. Leona Lishoy as Ann Maria’s mother was good. Saiju Kuruppu was fine. Siddique once again stuns you with a terrific performance within that small span of time. I liked the performance of those two boys, Vishal Krishna and Altaf.  The antagonist played by John and the character played by Shine Tom Chacko were also nice. There are many more people in the cast including Dharmajan, Bijukuttan, Anjali, Abu.

Like I said in the beginning, Midhun has managed to reduce the sort of over writing he has done in the past just to create humor. Ann Maria starts of in the typical zone of a children’s movie and gradually enters a hilarious phase. The middle one hour of the movie is probably the catchiest and impressive one as it has all the fun elements of the movie. A comedy oriented script has included contemporary and relevant issues like the effects of divorce, the torture faced by school kids and even the recent change in the bar policy gets mentioned in the narrative. It may be a very minor thing, but presenting the Bengali worker in a good light and showing him as a trust worthy fellow was something that should be appreciated. The cinematography was good. Edits lacked grace in that fight sequence in the second half. Background score wasn’t that appealing. The songs from Shaan Rahman were nice.

So overall, Ann Maria Kalippilaanu is that enjoyable one time watch with no real boring phases to its credits. It has a story that will please kids and a semi realistic treatment that will please those who like commercial fun films. And yeah the cameo was simple and pleasing.

Rating : 3/5