The film is like a collage of characters from earlier movies that fails to thrill
Director: Priyadarshan
Cast: Jayasurya, Pia Vajpayee, Nedumudi Venu, Nandu, Innocent
Rating: Two stars
No Malayali can forget the perennially funny scene in Kilukkam where Innocent emotes the effect on a penniless man when he wins a big lottery. Priyadarshan tries to stetch that emotion to two hours and more, only to find that the subject can’t sustain viewer interest for such a long time. In a sense, Amayum Muyalum is like a collage of scenes and characters from the director’s earlier movies but the final mish mash fails to thrill.
The fictional border village with its mix of languages and melange of colours is a throwback to Thenmavin Kombathu but one sorely misses Shobana and Mohanlal who made that movie unforgettable. It is no big consolation that there is a Mohanlal voice-over in the beginning and the presence of Innocent, Nedumudi Venu and KPAC Lalitha only helps to remind you of a glorious, bygone era. The talented Jayasurya is more or less wasted while Pia Vajpayee has little or nothing to do except laugh or cry. Priyan has tried every trick in his book including that routine group commotion when people fall, fly, float and roll unintentionally while knocking down and against a hundred objects. M.G. Sreekumar is also roped in to be part of the remix. Sadly, movies and music have moved on.
Veteran Venu plays a lottery seller who finds that one of his tickets had hit the jackpot. To trace the winner and appropriate the ticket, he throws a party after pawning his goat, their only possession! And the poor creature, we are made to believe, fetches him enough money to throw a lavish party complete with an item number. But alas, all attend except the winner, who goes into such a state of hyper excitement that he even forgets to breathe. Nandu plays the dead man to perfection and from then on, it is supposed to be a comedy of errors involving the corpse.
It is not hard to sacrifice logic and disbelief at the altar of comedy but the problem is, the jokes do not possess the intended punch but fall flat like the desperate jabs of a tired pugilist. The mood is never serious, so you don’t take the message, too, all that seriously; that money doesn’t bring happiness or peace only but only breeds greed.
( Source : deccan chronicle )
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