Viji Thampi is known to be one of the best technicians of current day Mollywood. But his fancy for the heroes of the past and repetition of stale story lines and disastrous comedies may land him in turmoil, if he is not ready to go for refreshing his capabilities with quality scripts. 'Natakame Ulakam' is one such movie that stoops down with poor show all the way, all set to end up in another disaster due to its inane scripts and poor attempts on comedy.
The movie has Mukesh as Omanakuttan, a sincere cooperative bank manager, living a happy life with his wife and only daughter. Though an ardent dramatist and theatrical activist he gets very less opportunity to show off his talents. And when ever he catches one, he will take over the show as the director, scripter and even the lead artist. He has only one dream-of being in at least one cinema at some point of his life. He faces tough rebukes from his father in law-'Labham Lambodharan Pillai' (Jagathy Sreekumar) for this care free attitude.
The arrival of Pavanan Parassala (Suraj Venjaramoodu), who presents himself as one of the assistants of Steven Spielberg ,presently planning to debut into Malayalam films becomes a turning point in the life of Omanakuttan. He is now selected as the hero, producer and scriptwriter of the movie. But within days he realises that Pavanan is a fraud incapable of shorting a single scene. Now Omanakuttan is faced with the task of somehow completing the movie that he has already started.
Into these chaos is the side track involving Murali (Vinoo Mohan), Omanakuttan's younger brother who is in love with Nandhana (Saranya) the girl from the same village, now selected as the heroine of the movie produced by Omanakuttan. Murali's attempts to somehow thwart the movie production, to bring back Nandhana to his life creates further problems to Omanakuttan who is already in great financial debt, following his fancies with film.
If you are surprised with the similarity of the plot with that of Mammootty's recent 'Best Actor', there will be hundreds of new questions if you have watched the film. With a very shaky script which doesn't ell out a believable scene, the movie also fails to present anything in narrative style or sequences that is fresh. The screenplay is devoid of drama and what you watch is a repetition and reflection of sequences that you watched in many movies of the past. And the predictable climax that is quite filmy, doesn't move you one bit. Even the comedies are of low brow and attempts by Jagadheesh and co to add some interests into the proceedings fails terribly. Believe me, Suraj in the later half earnestly receives alt-least a twenty slaps on face from different characters, in his attempt to make you laugh at least a couple of times, while Salimkumar tries his very best with a grand gala parade of double entendres..
The performances side are usual and mediocre with none in the cast having a role that they can treasure. Mukesh sleepwalks in another regular role while others including Jagdheesh, Jagathy Sreekumar and Bindhu Panikkar are cast in their regular roles.
Johnson's music is as not so exciting as the script while Anil Nair has tried his best to capture and grade quality visuals.
All in all, Viji Thampi, who had made at least a dozen of well created comedies will realize that comedy is quite a difficult emotion to create on celluloid, if it is backed by poor script lines. 'Natakame Ulakam' thus ends as a light entertainer with comedy attempts witnessed umpteen times in the past. At the box-office, lack of publicity and ordinary merits is sure to add to its woes.
