Halfway into Jomonte Suvisheshangal , what occupies the audience’s mind is not the story, not the actors, not their performances, nor the treatment. It’s a sense of having experienced this before. It’s too recent, too fresh in memory to be termed ‘déjà vu’. And, then it strikes you. This is the Sathyan Anthikkad version of what you have seen in the similarly named Jacobinte Swargarajyam , hardly a year ago.
A rich businessman, an aimless son, business collapse, son suddenly turns responsible and set things right — the skeleton remains same in both cases. You just need to wait till the interval for this skeleton to tumble out of the closet, of course clad in the traditional Anthikkad clothing of ‘mundu’ and ‘shirt’, which all his protagonists end up wearing. Dulquer Salman too gets to wear it, but only after obliging his fans with flashy clothes and a Harley Davidson ride.
- Direction - Sathyan Anthikkad
- Starring - Dulquer Salman, Mukesh, Anupama Parameswaran, Aishwarya Rajesh
In his latest outing, Sathyan Anthikkad takes us to the insanely happy home of the rich businessman Vincent (Mukesh). Except the prodigal youngest son Jomon (Dulquer), everyone else is well-settled in life and minting money, just like the shrewd patriarch. Jomon, meanwhile, plays the spoilt brat to the hilt, burning large holes in his father’s account.
One risky business decision later, Vincent loses it all, which is a cue for Jomon’s responsibility to kick in, and the rest of the loving family to all turn hostile. From that point onwards, it’s all about the chemistry between the father and the son, something which we have seen in quite a number of Sathyan movies. But, what holds up the movie is this, with Mukesh and Dulquer coming up with earnest performances, and being perfect foils to each other, in the earlier funny repartees and in the later, emotional sequences. Two female leads also appear, but get lost amid the father-son tale.
To enhance Jomon’s character, the script depends on several familiar tropes, like the character of a rich arrogant businesswoman, the selfish-beyond-belief family members and quite a few others. The script does not take too many risks too, refusing to ever take the unexpected routes. When making a movie which has a storyline so similar to a recent hit, these deviations are what you expect.
But, in the final message, without which no Sathyan movie can happen, it takes a completely different turn from Jacobinte Swargarajyam . While the latter was more about somehow winning back all that was lost, here the protagonists are forced to question the way they plundered and lived, and thus ends up raising the same to contemporary society too. Only that, the question is too late in the tale and hardly holds any force.
