When one of the most awaited movies of the year, 'Minnaminnikkoottam' with a stellar cast hit the theatres, expectations were naturally high. An intented emotional drama from reel one to the last, Kamal's new flick is a tiresome effort which only succeeds marginally to live up to the expectations.
The movie opens with Charulatha (Meera Jasmine), a software techie in Singapore getting a wedding invitation via email, from Kalyani, one of her long lost friends. The movie, after leisurely unfolding the credits, goes on to a long flashback. Then we see Charulatha and Abhilash (Narain), both software engineers working in the same firm, allegedly in love resolving a recent spat, which is common between them.
Their eight-member techie gang including loudmouthed Manikunju (Jayasurya), the diplomatic Rose Mary (Roma), the pious Kalyani (Radhika), the Tamil-speaking Parthasarathy (Anoop Chandran,) who all assemble together in the flat of happily-married couple Siddharth (Indrajith) and Mumtaz (Samvrutha).
Abhi's dad (P Sreekumar), an I A S officer who holds a big position in the Prime Minister's office comes down from Delhi to meet Charu and her family and make mock off her father (Saikumar) Balan, a bank officer. This ignites more problems with their relationship and finally, results in the death of Charu's father. The much repressed Charu then move off to Singapore, away from her friends, unable to reconcile with Abhi.
Watching 'Minnaminnikkoottam' , the two hour 25 minutes drama, devoid of any strong plot and characterization was pretty demanding than entertaining. The egocentric relationships and strains in the ''the rich boy meet poor girl'' story planted in an IT backdrop are not at all convincing.
Moreover, the problem with `Minnaminnikkoottam' is that, it will be accepted only when you have people who can associate with them. So the movie seems to be just aiming at the urban audience, with its plush beautiful apartment sets, brightly colored interiors and dashing work spaces.
Amidst its lavishness and grandeur, Kamal loses the life of the plot about the complexities of relationships, which hardly leaves a couple of scenes to linger with us.
He proves his brilliance only in the remarkably pictured songs, and not many sequences few and far between, which shows some amount of life. The talk of love, commitment and relationships, gets prosaic after a while, as the director and actors goes overboard with some emotional scenes going out of proportion. The biggest flaw that remains is this overblown sentimentality in lengthy wide shots, which repeatedly fills the movie's ever-stretching, never-ending story.
This can be a better movie if you are the type who doesn't demand a movie with the script racing away. And in that case, it's quite medium paced with some flavor which conveys the dilemmas of persons in love. I surmise these types and getting rarer, these days.
Although the chemistry between Narain and Meera Jasmine is to become the mainstay of the film, they hardly have any and just not ooze any feeling as if they are in love. Narain has his grace and shows his potential of being at the centre of events. Meera Jasmine as a woman living life her way, trying to come to terms with her own inner conflicts, feels inadequate for the character, with some more added injuries from her carefree dubbing. Jayasuriya and Roma as confident, ambitious, modern youth seems the couple who provide some sort of relief to the proceedings with their share of humor and fun. Indrajith, Anoop, Samvrutha and Radhika does have cardboard roles, with not much meaty built ups.
The technical section of the movie is worth mentioning with Manoj Pillai once again, creating frames that are bright and glossy. Biji Bal's songs and rerecording suit the mood and few like ''We are in love'',''Thara Jaalam'' and ''Kadalolam valtsalyam'' are definitely hummable. Gokuldas in the art department does his bit to boost the looks of the techie atmosphere. But that cannot be said about the editing by Rajagopal, who could have trimmed down the sequences to pace it, better.
In conclusion, 'Minnaminnikkoottam' ends up as pedestrian, vacuous, body-beautiful, soul-lacking film, despite holding some amount of promise that signify nothing.
