Velipadinte Pusthakam Review: An Epic Misfire from the 2 Lal's

Sethumadhavan .N

Haven’t we come across or heard of situations where everything just looks perfect or near perfect and still things go wrong? Unfortunately this was the first thing on my mind when I got out of my show of Lal Jose’s Onam release featuring Mohanlal, Velipadinte Pusthakam. On paper this was a film which looked promising in all ways, after all Lal Jose is not just a prolific filmmaker but also someone quite competent at making commercial entertainers. There’s no need to say anything about Mohanlal, not only is he one of India’s all-time best actors, he is also someone who continues to command a sway over the box office even today. As for the writing Lal Jose has gone back to Benny P.Nayarambalam, the duo had worked together previously for the successful Chanthupottu (2005) and the dismal Spanish Masala (2012). Perhaps there was something very promising with the concept that Benny had come up with, at least this is what a lot of us must have felt and here I am not referring to fans of Mohanlal alone.

There is a rivalry between 2 sets of students in a college, both of them belonging to different backgrounds and academic programmes. In the course of their daily routine in college the students or at least some of them break into an impromptu song of sorts, resulting in the “Endammede Jimmiki Kammal” (composed by Shaan Rahman, written by Anil Panachooran, vocals by Vineeth Sreenivasan and Renjith Unni) song which had gone on to become extremely popular much before the release of Velipadinte Pusthakam. A catchy campus song, this one is sure shot earworm material and the picturization on screen also works. I would have loved to start my review of the film by talking about some favorite scene or two from the film, in fact before the show began I was even thinking that there would be many such scenes for me to consider for the same. But alas that is not what I actually discovered, far from that in fact and hence the song reference, the one definite aspect of the film which works.

Velipadinte Pusthakam is a tale that revolves around a college in a coastal town in Kerala, where 2 groups of students are always at loggerheads with each other. Though the college is run by Christian priests, the priests themselves credit Vishwanathan (Anoop Menon) for having been the pillar behind the formation of the institution. The campus comes alive with the entry of Michael Idicula (Mohanlal) who takes charge as the new vice principal. Soon he becomes popular among the students as well as the management, even managing to unite the warring students. Realizing that the college lacks hostel facilities Michael convinces the priest body running the college to support his idea to have the hostel set up. Michael goes on to suggest that the students and the staff of the college combine to make a commercially viable feature film, a unique proposition of sorts for which Vijay Babu (playing himself) comes on board as the producer. What happens from thereon is what we get to see as the tale moves forward.

Right from his entry scene and to the way Michael goes on to become friendly with the students, one can feel the influence of K.S.Sethumadhavan’s Tamil film Nammavar (1994) featuring Kamal Haasan. But before you start thinking too much about it we find Lal Jose and Benny P.Nayarambalam changing tracks with some revelation about the character of Michael, followed by the filmmaking plan. It is clear that Lal Jose has attempted to talk about contemporary stuff popular among the youth, but then neither is the writing impactful enough, nor is the execution interesting. The film does assume the form of a thriller after a while but even then the proceedings do not really get gripping enough to work adequately.

Adding to the misery in a way is the run time of 157 minutes, keeping you hoping all the way for something really impactful to happen. There is an attempt to bring in humour in the first half in the form of Premraj (Salim Kumar), a college lecturer who is obsessed with sex but the attempt doesn’t really work. Sarath Kumar and Arun Kurian who play the student leaders get noticed while Anna Reshma Rajan (seen earlier in Angamaly Diaries) and Priyanka Nair are the female leads. Siddique and Chemban Vinod Jose play the standard bad guys without much trouble. Anoop Menon in the larger than life character of Vishwanathan aka Bullet Vishwan appears to be a misfit, perhaps it would have been better if it was played by Mohanlal himself. As for Mohanlal well he does look dignified when appearing as the academician who gets along well with students. But the change that the character undergoes later comes across as a weak attempt to appease the fans of the star.

This brings me back to the point with which I started this post; perhaps Lal Jose and Mohanlal had taken things a little too easy, if only they had taken some more care to focus on getting a really interesting story line the result could have been very different.

Bottomline:

Being the first film of Lal Jose where he has collaborated with Mohanlal the expectations were definitely bound to be very high. Unfortunately the result does not justify the hype and expectations.

Rating: 2/5