Geethaanjali - Exclusive Malayalam Movie Review

 Geethaanjali - Exclusive Malayalam Movie Review

Directed by     Priyadarshan
Produced by     G. P. Vijayakumar
Screenplay by     Abhilash Nair
Dialogue: Dennis Joseph
Music by     Vidyasagar
Cinematography     S. Tirru
Editing by     T. S. Suresh
Studio     Seven Arts International
Distributed by     Seven Arts International
                                P J Entertainments (Europe)
Release date(s)  14 November 2013
Country     India

Language     Malayalam

Cast

    Mohanlal as Dr. Sunny Joseph
    Suresh Gopi as Nakulan (Cameo)
    Keerthy Suresh as Geetha & Anjali
    Nishan as Anoop
    Swapna Menon as Mary
    Nassar
    Siddique
    Madhu
    Innocent
    Harisree Ashokan
    Ganesh Kumar
  

'Geethaanjali' is the sort of sequel to All time Malayalam classic 'Manichitrathazhu', which is a huge baggage itself. Expecting anything remotely close especially with Priyadarshan at the helms of of affairs was out of the question. But still the trailer and video song were able to create some sort of hype before the release.

Story

'Geethanjali' deals with another interesting 'case' that Para-Psychologist Dr. Sunny Joseph gets to encounter in his career. On his friend Nakulan's request Sunny comes to Kerala to investigate about the paranormal activities taking place in an old mansion, once soon to be married Anjali & Anoop sets foot inside. 


Geethanjali is a nice watch for those who don't frequent Hollywood/Foreign horror films, for others this might be an under whelming outing. Its definitely one of the better horror 'attempts' from Mollywood
after a long time. 

First half was good where the story gets established. In the second half especially toward the end the writer looses complete control and felt like everything was rushed and didn't knew how to end properly. Innocent's role which was meant as a comic releif gets repeatative after a point. The basic idea of the film is inspired from a Thai film, which interestingly has been used in 2  Malayalam films in the past.

Mohanlal gets a extended cameo length role, but his 'Sunny' failed to create the charm which he had last time around. Keerthy has made a very good debut, her performance in the climax was very good. Rest of the cast did an okay job.

The main issue with the film is the half baked script. It's Priyadarshan's skill that made a decent entertaining movie out of it. His direction is good, he has tried every trick in the 'horror' book to make the film interesting, thrilling and scary (to an extent). Equally worth appreciating are Tirru's camera work and TS Suresh's editing which prevents the movie from going to a mess. Dialogues were just Okay, had a drama feel in few scenes. Music was disappointing considering the iconic songs

 'Manichitrathazhu' had, but Vidyasagar scored big time in Background score. also kudos to the art department who have done an excellent job



As a horror film it quite succeeds in scaring the audience - its thrilling and told in a convincing manner too.  If you avoid any sort of comparison with the iconic predecessor Geethaanjali can be a decent watch.

 Being the biggest/widest release ever for Malayalam film, it should at least recover investments, in the worst case scenario.

Rating: 2.75/5

Verdict: above Average

Final Word : Don't Go with huge expectations, avoid comparison  with MCT, you will enjoy this ride

 

Mohanlal's Geethanjali postponed to accommodate Diwali releases ?

Geethanjali is one of the most awaited Malayalam movies of the year, because of the fact that it is a spinoff of 'Manichithratazhu', an all time classic. When the shooting began the idea was to release the movie during Pooja holidays [Oct 11th] and they were shooting with multiple units too. Then it was pushed to Nov 1st to get a solo, wide release.

But once the release date of Diwali movies were announced the film got again pushed ahead by two weeks. Geethanjali will now be releasing worldwide on November 14th. When Nov 1 was decided Only Krrish 3 was supposed to have a big release on that date, it was later that Tamil films - Ajith's Arrambam & Karthi's All in all Azhagu Raja joined the race. Both of these film were supposed to have arrived in different dates, but one got postponed and other preponed.

Other language movies [Hindi & Tamil] have a good market in Kerala cause majority of the people understand the language [If Telugu undubbed movies release with subtitles even those will have audience]. So theaters and distributors have made a lot of investments in these projects. So if a Mohanlal starrer gets released on that date it will eat into the screen count and opening week collections of other language movies. So it was idea suggested by Exhibitors federation too postpone the release as Geethanjali is also to benefit from the movie. Since 90% of the life time collections of most of the OL movies comes in the first week (or may be two weeks) it will be easy for Geethanjali to have a wide release on 14th.

So a win-win situation for both parties. But there was no other way possible for makers of Geethanjali than to postpone. Remember in 2011 when similar situation arose the exhibitors called for strike on some unnecessary reason to support Velayudham, 7am Arivu & Ra.One which were much bigger films than this year's OL Diwali releases.