After a couple of duds, the director of comic flicks, Thaha is back with a movie that tries in all sorts to tickle the funny vein of any lighthearted viewer. This `Kappal Muthalali' with an inspiring premise and racy, loud narration is interesting in some parts, but poorly budgeted making and hurriedly done execution has took away the charm of a quality entertainer, to disparage it into an average stuff.
The movie follows the ill-fate of Bhoominathan, a former Passport Office employee who took a voluntary retirement from service. He plans to build a resort on a recently bought land, with the amount that he received as retirement benefits. And when he starts with the digging work for the swimming pool, he finds the remnants of an ancient yacht embedded down in the earth. Bhoominathan who has a plenty of deeds to realize as per the final wishes of his deceased father, now expects a fortune in the vessel. But with the arrival of archaeological department officials who stop all construction work and lease the land for further excavation, Bhoomi is left with no options but to succumb to his ill-fate.
Inspired from a real life incident, where a ship was discovered from a compound near Chirakkal, the scripts by Thaha and Saji Damodhar had the potential of a hilarious affair, though the realization of various scenes could have been much better. Ramesh Pisharady as Bhoominathan plays to his strengths in comic timing but lacks the punch and is not convincing as a full time hero. He continues with his maneuvers as in his `bluff master' show, but in other departments don't impress much. Bheeman Reghu, Jagathy Sreekumar and Jagadeesh has a role to mention while a dozen other comic artists are in the fray to try and to make the proceedings sillier and lighter. Mukesh makes a lackluster appearance as the deputy director of Archaeological department. Sarayu who comes up as the heroine Radhika don't have much role to play.
The songs by Sumesh Anand have foot tapping beats but the inane silly lyrics and below par visualizations with some meager ridiculous choreography from the dancers, spoil the chances of any decent entertainment. The art direction in the songs are also pitiable and don't even match the quality of an amateurish drama. The background scores lifted or borrowed from many movies like `currency' hardly match the events and often take away the intensity of the scenes, if any. The technical sides, mainly the cinematography handled by Sadath and editing by P C Mohanan are also average.
Anyhow, `Kappal Muthalali' is a stuff that may prove effective in other south Indian languages, if remade with the needed visual splendor and quality. And for this Malayalam version, it will be better if you can wait for the arrival of one such. And if you can forget the poor making for some mindless wits without much logic, then this `Kappal Muthalali' may entertain you in parts.
