Maranamaas,  A Serial Killer Comedy With Pluck & Perkiness

Rating: ** ½

 Over the last five years, I have realized one thing: Basil Joseph could have played Minnal Murli better than Tovino Thomas . Basil has a certain inbuilt insouciance about him, and the ability  to see through life, and how  genuinely ridiculous  it can be.

In Maranamaas, which Tovino  has  co-produced, Basil is a  self-appointed ‘cool dude’: dyed hair, preposterous  clothes with an attitude to match. Luke thinks he has all the answers when in fact he  is clueless about the  questions themselves. His neighbours are  annoyed  by his busybody gimmicks and have crowd-funded his migration .

When we first meet  him his  girlfriend Jessie(Anishma Anilkumar) has decided to  leave Luke: she just can’t take his strutting and  preening anymore.How is  Jessie to know that she  would soon be in a  bus with a  dead man who she has accidently  killed when he tried to molest her.

The dead man Kurup(Puliyanam Poulose) is  a disgrace  to old age: the repulsive  man leers at and paws any woman of any age.I don’t mean to  sound  like  a  spoilsport,but it is rather dismaying that  a character  like Kurup who deserves to be locked away for a lifetime, is supposed to be  funny.Then  again,Malayalam cinema has always demolished  holy cows.

Also  meant for comic consumption  is a straitlaced  serial killer SK(Rajesh Madhavan, priceless) who  likes to brutally slay old men and  stuff their  mouth bananas.

The  kela  instinct, so to speak.

Also  on a  droll stroll is a  cop  Ajay(Baby Anthony) whose pet dog is  missing.We are supposed to feel forhim. But the  narrative never  lets us get close  to the  characters. Initially the writing seems to have  a fairly  strong  grip  over these aberrant  characters, but the  comedy soon slides  into a  free-for-all , with  the  writers  second-guessing audiences’ expectation  and coming  up with  situations that get progressively befuddled and  far from  amusing.

That said, there is ample  evidence of intended ingenuity  in Maranamass , especially in the way the characters respond to the presence of a dead character  in their midst. What  goes wrong, and  irreparably so, is  the  constant  pursuit of irreverent laughter  which kills the tone of  normalcy.It’s like  you are forever  dressing up to go for an imaginary  party.

 For instance Jessie grandmother(Kudassanad Kanakam ) is the  kind of amplified liberal who encourages  Jessie to  go out at odd hours but insists  she  carry pepper spray.

After  a point, the spray is the most peppery part  of the plot. The storytelling  hits the bland gland too often, and the climax in a garbage locality is  so contrived  it feels like the laughter is being served  by rote  rather by write.

It is  baffling how the  writers let the comic strain run wild  after a while, thereby  negating  whatever advantage the laughs  might have procured  in the initial  stages  of  the plot progression.