Maranamass movie review

Cast: Basil Joseph, Rajesh Madhavan, Babu Antony, Suresh Krishna, Siju Sunny, Anishma Anilkumar

Director: Sivaprasad

Star rating: ★★★

The fact that actor-writer-director Basil Joseph and actor-producer Tovino Thomas are thick as thieves is well-known among cinephiles. The two work together professionally quite often and if Basil gave Tovino a superhero in Minnal Murali, it’s now the turn of Tovino to give Basil a comical sigma male in Marannamass.

The premise

A serial killer who’s killing elderly men and then stuffing the state’s famed Poovan banana in their mouth is causing havoc in Kerala. Dubbed the ‘Banana Killer’, he has created fear among people, and the villagers of Vallikkunnu are no exception. The movie reveals early on who the killer is and why he is hell-bent on murdering old men (childhood trauma), and how he finds his victims. Now, while the police are searching for the Banana Killer, another man is creating a major nuisance in the village itself – Luke PP (Basil Joseph), the hero of this film. The police arrest him believing he is the serial killer, but unfortunately for them, he’s not.

Proudly branding himself a sigma male, Luke is a new-age YouTuber cum influencer who goes out of his way to expose people’s dirty secrets with not a malicious intention but to clean up society. If he pulled out the porn search details of the panchayat head and plastered it in the village, he also placed the local police station up for sale on OLX as he didn’t find the cops doing their work. Fed up with his antics, the entire village pools in a sum of ₹16 lakhs to send him packing to Czechoslovakia to get rid of him. The last straw for Luke is when Luke’s girlfriend Jessie (Anishma Anilkumar) breaks up with him because of his inability to take life seriously. Luke is all set to win her back somehow when a bus journey Jessie is on adds a major twist to the story. One night, Jessie heads back and finds herself on the bus with Luke, Jikku (driver), Aruvi (bus conductor), an elderly man, and a stranger. And it is this bus ride they are on that the entire story unfolds.

What works for Maranamass

In recent times, Basil Joseph has been striving to push himself out of his comfort zone (think Ponman, Praavinkoodu Shappu, Nunnakuzhi) and get into the skin of really offbeat characters. Luke PP is one of those roles that uses Basil Joseph’s ability to pull off comedy and adds the Gen Z Sigma male who struggles to pull it off despite his flashy clothes, blonde hair, and faded haircut.

Basil has pulled off Luke in style, but it has been ably aided by the other actors, namely Rajesh Madhavan, Suresh Krishna, Siju Sunny, Babu Antony, and Anishma Anilkumar. Each of them has delivered a truly note-worthy performance and the on-screen chemistry between the scenes lights up even when the dialogues don’t.

In Maranamass, debutant Sivaprasad, who has co-written the film with Siju Sunny, gives us a dark comedy centred around Luke. Most of the comedy in the film, though, is of a slapstick nature and often situational, with heavy pop culture references to elicit laughs. In one instance, the trend of pre-wedding photoshoots is spoofed with a ‘save the date’ photoshoot at a graveyard, and in another, a cop is called Tiger sir because he carries around a Tiger balm in his hand. You get the drift by now. Not all these scenes want to make you laugh and this is due to the inconsistencies in the screenplay that the second half lags.

Each of the key characters has been given interesting quirks to keep alive the narrative, which hits speed breaks ever so often, like the bus journey that Luke and Jessie are on. Produced by Tovino Thomas, Maranamass is, for the most part, an enjoyable, fun ride that’s filled with mayhem.