Namadhu movie review: A decent family outing

Direction: Chandra Shekar Yeleti

Cast: Mohanlal, Gautami, Viswant, Urvasi

The story revolves around four different characters in four different situations. Sairam (Mohanlal) is an assistant manager at a supermarket. With the mounting expenses of running an household, he is always in need of money. While he expects a promotion as a manager, he is troubled when his colleague also vies for the post. A selfish act lands him deep in the soup. Gayathri (Gautami) is a middle class housewife who struggles to meet the ends and has a routine and unexciting life. A chance meet with her college professor (Gollapudi Maruti Rao), Gayatri gets the plum offer of a lucrative foreign job. Mahita (Raina Rao) is a schoolgirl who develops  a liking for a slum kid who wants to join the same school where she studies. Then there’s Abhi (Vishwant), a studious computer student who falls for a rich girl (Anisha Ambrose) and gets diverted from studies. When the girl rejects him, Abhi is heart broken. The rest is the journey of these four characters and how they come out of their problems with the film ending with the convergence of the quartet.

Mohanlal proves his versatility once again and he is an absolute treat to watch. The veteran brings out the pain of guilt effortlessly although it reminds us of his Drishyam act. Gautami shines as a simple middle class homemaker and scores mainly in emotional scenes. Vishwant and Raina do their part well, while the small kid from the slum is endearing with his performance. Urvashi succeeds in raising few laughs.

Though billed as a trilingual with Mohanlal, Gautami, Urvasi etc dubbing their own voices, we still get a feeling as if we are watching a dubbed movie. The director cleverly adds a dialogue where Mohanlal admits that he is not good with the language to substantiate for the actor’s heavy Malayalam accented Tamil.  The lip sync goes for a toss at several places. And most of locations where the story takes place are apparently in Hyderabad, like the airport, Hussain Sagar Lake, the malls, which mars the local connect. In a multi-narrative subject like this, a racy pace, which is imperative, is sadly lacking. The director should be lauded for his effort to portray a film, which can be watched by family audiences, for, it is devoid of obscenity, double meaning dialogues, kutthu numbers, violence and over the top action sequences. Though there are few glitches, Namadhu is an honest attempt and a decent family outing.