Ente Mezhuthiri Athazhangal Review

Ente Mezhuthiri Athazhangal is the comeback film of Anoop Menon as a writer after a four-year break. But what's disturbing is the fact that his idea of storytelling just went back to the melodramatic phase rather than understanding the pulse and intelligence of the audience. Even his usually appealing intellectual cool outbursts sounds ridiculously lame in this one and this candlelight dinner saga is a boring experiment with just visual lushness.

Sanjay, a famous chef in Kochi has a secret ingredient with him which he uses in his chicken curry. That curry is famous among men as it has the potential to improve their sex life. Ente Mezhuthiri Athazhangal is a journey in which we discover how our hero got this ingredient along with his true love.

Hero trying to woo the heroine after first glance itself and unlike other girls who easily fell for him, she decides to reject him. Hero tries the angle and gets close to her. There is the inevitable room sharing scenario and after seeing the kind-hearted nature of the hero, the heroine who pretty much body shamed him admits her love. This is the ingredients from the formulas we have seen in those 80's and 90's movies. I really wished Menon followed the advice of his own words in the movie of finding one's own recipe. He wants to make his movie look like an all in all emotional package. But he is kind of stuck in the physicality and lust angle in a relationship. So many instances are there in the film including two cameos by Lal Jose and Dileesh Pothan, that will make you wonder whether this was written by the same Anoop Menon.

As an actor, Anoop Menon hasn't offered much variety and here also there isn't a big change from that. Miya is looking beautiful and sadly there wasn't much required from her beyond that. The decision to dub her voice with another person wasn't a great idea. Alencier sounds too eccentric and Baiju has taken an effort to play it differently. Nirmal Palazhi's character was Anoop Menon's shot at showing progressiveness and they still want to make fun of it. Hannah Reji Koshy, VK Prakash, Nisa, Sreekanth Murali etc are also there in the cast in small roles.

Sooraj Thomas who previously made PaVa is the director of Ente Mezhuthiri Athazhangal and he isn't doing much of a directorial bit to make it look appealing. Visual beauty is something our filmmakers find as an excuse to call a movie great and here also that ideology is applied. Every frame is sugar coated with colors and lights and of course slow motion. Just like I already said the story is an old school Casanova story with moments that are cliched and predictable. The irrelevant subplots just make it a bit more excruciating. The lust obsession also minimizes the scope of this film. Music and background score is engaging on an album level.

Outdated would be the right word to describe Ente Mezhuthiri Athazhangal. Anoop Menon fails to evolve as a writer and that takes away all the charm from this drama. Menon wants to express his opinion on a lot of things, but the clumsy script just doesn't have the fire in it.