Movie Review: Chandupottu

This is a story of a fisherman’s family. The grandma in the family is longing for a female grandchild to be born because all the grandchildren are males! Unfortunately, she ends up with another grandson. Frustrated, she ends up bringing him (named Radhakrishnan) up like a girl — long hair, painted nails, make-up, bindi etc. Despite being a boy, he talks like a girl, walks like a girl and hangs out with the girls. However, he falls for one of the girls. There is some historic family rivalry courtesy of which a villain (a fine performance from Inderjit, son of the late mallu movie star Sukumaran), is introduced. As expected after some twists and turns the lead pair comes together (as if you didn’t guess!). This is a family story with plenty of masala, but some of it like the basic theme of the film is pretty creative, though not necessarily remotely realistic. There is some truly enjoyable hilarious comedy as a part of the main story itself as opposed to the deliberately inserted plug and play comedy that you see in most films.

Hats off to Dileep for a fantastic performance as Radhakrishnan. Gopika does justice to her role as the heroine. The movie is running to packed houses despite having crossed the 100-day mark. After a long time, I saw the movie in a jam-packed theatre in India! Overall, a very enjoyable film.

I am pretty certain that remakes of the film in other languages will soon start to appear. But the hero’s role is a very challenging one and not may heros might be willing to take this on.