Vellari Pattanam movie review: Manju Warrier is fun even as the script thins out

Cast: Manju Warrier, Soubin Shahir, Kottayam Ramesh, Veena Nair, Suresh Krishna, Remya Suresh, Shabareesh Varma, Abhirami Bhargavan, Salim KumarDirector: Mahesh Vettiyaar Language: MalayalamFor a resident of north India who is tired of the Hindi film industry’s deafening silence about troubling issues, its genuflection before the Central government and propaganda-driven Hindi scripts, any Indian film that ridicules politicians and parties in power offers some relief, irrespective of its weaknesses. The Malayalam film Vellari Pattanam does that. A lot. And much of the film skates along on the strength of its contempt for netakkal, a sense of humour and Manju Warrier’s charisma. How can you not chuckle at a Leftist leader surreptitiously praying to a religious deity hidden behind an image of an iconic Communist? Or gobar-gaumutra-fixated saffron-sporting men?Manju and Soubin Shahir play siblings K.P. Sunanda and K.P. Suresh who belong to a Left-of-Centre political party in Vellari Pattanam. She is a ward member in the fictional village of Chakkarakudam. He is desperate to get a ticket in the next election.Sunanda is savvier than her brother, and has an eye on the big picture that he does not even see. As they cross swords, they must also contend with inner-party machinations and the Opposition Left’s games. On the margins, a Right-wing outfit tries to poach from both organisations.The parties in the film have fictional names, but there is no room for doubt that they are modelled on the Left Democratic Front that now governs Kerala and the Congress that is its Opposition in the state, in addition to the BJP that is trying to make inroads into Kerala even as it dominates national politics. Kerala-based viewers bred on Malayalam cinema may view this as no big deal, which is an enviable position to be in because frankly, if a Hindi film did even one-tenth as much, it would be so unique in the contemporary Hindi cinema universe that it would be deemed courageous. Too bad then for writer Sarath Krishna and writer-director Mahesh Vettiyaar that they work in the Malayalam film industry, with its track record of boldness on various tricky social and political issues including specifically with regard to political parties and politicians. If The Great Indian Kitchen (2021) portrayed the mistreatment of a wife in an upper-caste Hindu home against the backdrop of the Sabarimala imbroglio, last month’s Madanolsavam derided the governing parties at the Centre and in Kerala while taking potshots at citizens for whom “apolitical” has become a clever euphemism for apathy. In the arena of political satire, last year’s Nna, Thaan Case Kodu shines bright. The list is long and spans decades. Any new film has a high bar to live up to.Thematically, Vellari Pattanam is on point while portraying the duality of the Left and the in-fighting in the Centre-Left that are all too familiar to the Kerala public. After establishing this basic scenario though, and while continuously mining it for laughs, the script does not examine the setting with depth or indicate the actual harm these parties are doing in the state. The writing is even more superficial in the hahaha-hohoho depiction of a religion-based Right-wing party and does not even hint at the extreme damage already done to the country by majoritarian forces. This is a low-risk approach to extremism that is as good as taking no stand at all.Vellari Pattanam is also averse to giving Sunanda negative shades. This is unlike the acclaimed political satire Vellimoonga (2014), which positioned an unscrupulous politico as its lead. Sunanda’s scheming is cutesefied as sibling rivalry for the most part, or necessitated by evil opponents. Vellari Pattanam’s ending though suffers from a Vellimoonga hangover.The writing is faulty not just in its approach to politics. Shabareesh Varma is cast as a politician who seems to have been attracted to Sunanda in the past (and maybe is now too, though that is unclear). The challenge of building personal relationships across political divides was handled brilliantly in 2018’s Eeda. If this was the point being made through Shabareesh’s character, then it is strangely vague. Another element hanging in mid-air is Abhirami Bhargavan who exists only for the purpose of being Suresh’s girlfriend. Remya Suresh plays one of Sunanda’s constituents with potential, but the outline of her story is never filled in.At places the writing gets downright lazy, hitting its lowest points in the clichéd flashback to Sunanda and Suresh’s childhood, and early on, when Suresh narrates the saga of his entry into politics to his friend (Krishna Shankar). The latter obviously knows these details and even says so, but it appears that the writers could not conceive a better way to convey this information.Manju and Soubin play well off each other even when the script plays safe. She is a livewire as Sunanda. He pulls off Suresh’s insecurity and silliness with flair. Kottayam Ramesh as their father is hilarious when he simply sits back and watches his adult children squabble like kittens.Veena Nair hams it up as Nina Koshy, a stereotypical netav who emerges from the mindset that if a woman is successful and beautiful then hey, she must be in bed with a man in power. The writers extend this narrow thinking to Sunanda too in a limited way when they show a male senior of her party noticing her good looks and she acts coy around him.That said, the script uses Nina to bust the prevalent lie that women in large numbers abuse laws that are meant to prevent their oppression. While doing so, Vellari Pattanam also points us in the direction of a truth not often acknowledged: that in the minority of instances when women do misuse these laws, the ones pushing them to do so are often men. Sunanda’s meeting with the aforementioned party big shot also yields an acute observation rarely found in Malayalam cinema or the public discourse. This man is north Indian. When he arrives in Chakkarakudam, he is disappointed to note that while he wore a mundu for his Kerala visit, most of his Malayali colleagues are not dressed in traditional attire. The voluntary effacement of their own culture by real-world Malayalis, whether to fit in outside Kerala or when interacting with north Indians within Kerala, is a curious phenomenon that merits a separate essay.Writers who are capable of such insights can do better than Vellari Pattanam. For what it is worth though, the film is entertaining if you are in an undemanding mood. Besides, it is refreshing to see a woman star headlining a political satire, a genre dominated by men. Manju Warrier remains fun to watch – and very funny – even as the script thins out.Rating: 2.5 (out of 5 stars) Vellari Pattanam was in theatres in March 2023. It is now streaming on Amazon Prime Video.Anna M.M. Vetticad is an award-winning journalist and author of The Adventures of an Intrepid Film Critic. She specialises in the intersection of cinema with feminist and other socio-political concerns. 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