Oru Muthassi Gadha

Oru Muthassi Gadha in a way is Jude Anthany Joseph’s attempt to create something that is similar to Aashiq Abu’s Da Thadiya. Much like his first film OSO, Jude adapts the quirky humorous track to convey the theme and this time chooses a little preachier topic. With almost everything having that half baked feel, Oru Muthassi Gadha is an okay film that qualifies to be a passable one because of the minimal humor quotient.

A 60+ year old elderly woman Leela is the central protagonist of this movie. Because of her short tempered and annoying behavior her son, daughter in law and grandchildren are finding it really difficult to live with her. The movie Oru Muthassi Gadha focuses on one particular phase of Leela’s life where she spends time with her daughter in law’s mother and gets a chance to fix her issues with life. How that happens and what all changes happens to Leela is what Oru Muthassi Gadha dealing with.

The story idea credit is given to Nivin Pauly and you can never say that the basic theme is a flawed one. It is a topic of contemporary relevance and there are many areas in this film where Jude has managed to create situations that are practically relatable along with a diplomatic politics. But it is the deliberate inclusion of certain unimportant elements to the film, just for the sake of OSO model fun that takes away the charm from the movie. When the characters in the movie talks emotionally, we aren’t really feeling the depth of their disappointment. Oru Muthassi Gadha is more aligned towards being an instantaneous entertainer rather than a memorable movie with catchy ideas.

Rajini Chandy plays the role of Leelamma. It is her debut and the performance also has some hiccups in the beginning, but gradually picks up as the movie goes on. Same was the case with dubbing artist turned actress Bhagyalakshmi. It was good to see a director casting someone like Suraj Venjaramood in the role of a family man without his usual comical gimmicks. Suraj has used the opportunity and delivers a controlled subtle performance. Krishna Prasad as Bengali Babu was okay. Lena and Aparna Balamurali were good. Many other minimal roles are there in the film like Ramesh Pisharady, Renji Panicker, Rajeev Pillai and the director Jude Anthany Joseph himself. Vineeth Sreenivasan in his extended cameo like appearance was also nice.

As far as making is concerned, the style is pretty much similar to Jude’s first movie. The quirks included in scenes and the murmuring counter dialogues are the main things that keep the movie alive. Jude’s writing needs more fine tuning as it isn’t exploring the emotional side of the theme with the required sensitivity. The Bangali Babu’s back story, the things happening with Leelamma’s grandson etc. are charmless and somewhat pointless addition to this movie. Vinod Illampally’s cinematography was okay and I really liked the tidy and effective usage of helicam. Shaan Rahman’s BGM was attractive while songs weren’t that catchy on first listening.

To sum it up I would say, Oru Muthassi Gadha is just an okay film with simple fun elements and a very basic thought. The topic they have discussed deserves spotlight but the treatment also demanded a better approach towards that theme.

Rating : 2.5/5