When Dasan (Mohanlal) rushes into a fight with a rich man to impress a woman, Vijayan (Sreenivasan) tells him that he's being foolish. But, when the rich man calls Dasan a 'scoundrel', Vijayan immediately deflates the latter's car tyres. They throw insults at each other all day long but at the first hint of trouble, they turn to each other, shouting "Dasa!" and "Vijaya!".

Nadodikattu, directed by Sathyan Anthikad, is a story about survival and it should rightfully have been a tear-inducing tragedy. But, that's not how real life plays out -- real life is often about people finding it within themselves to love, laugh, and make the best of their precarious circumstances. The two bumbling friends, Dasan and Vijayan, are just trying to survive and their life, which is a comedy of errors, never stops being entertaining though Anthikad at unexpected moments manages to inject some pathos into the narrative.

Written by Sreenivasan and based on a story by Siddique-Lal, Nadodikattu was set in the '80s when unemployment was not glorified or romanticised on screen the way it is now. "Enganengillum oru joli sheriyakkanam" (should somehow get a job) was a common aspiration for the characters to have. Dasan has a First Class in BCom and Vijayan has studied up to pre-degree, but both find themselves working as peons in a private company, eager to somehow move up the scale.

Dumb and Dumber

The film begins with Vijayan complaining about Dasan's lack of responsibility on the home front. He hasn't bought enough supplies for the house or washed the vessels like he was told to. When Vijayan begins to do the dishes himself, Dasan saunters in and asks for a cup of tea. The relationship almost replicates a husband-wife one in a patriarchal household. But, the dynamic outside the home is more like that of squabbling siblings, with Dasan having the upper hand because he's better-looking and has a higher degree than Vijayan.

Sreenivasan is known for self-deprecating humour and he has no trouble playing second fiddle to Mohanlal, the star, in a script written by him. It's a dynamic that the duo has exploited on screen to uproarious results several times, and mostly in Sathyan Anthikad and Priyadarshan films. They've played friends, employer-employee, and even enemies but the audience never got tired of their sparring. It's a bromance that kept evolving and beating the predictable, with the humour mostly arising from situational comedy.

In Nadodikattu, we don't really know what brought the two men together. There is no flashback about their lives but we're given the information in brief - Vijayan stole his sister-in-law's thaalimala to leave home and look for better prospects; Dasan's mother is living in a distant relative's home and doing household chores as her son tries to earn a livelihood. Anthikad does not milk these stories and turn them into maudlin narratives. Instead, his characters with their broad grins and naivete, jump from one promising prospect to another -- be it buying cows or travelling illegally to Dubai!

They're so desperate for their fortunes to turn that they get excited by any light at the end of the tunnel, only to realise that it was an approaching train.

Mess and Messier

There's not a single boring moment in Nadodikattu because one mess just leads our men to a bigger mess. Let's try and explain this: Dasan wants to impress a woman doctor but ends up insulting his new boss; the friends get fired and can no longer pay rent, so they take the advice of their landlord and procure a pair of cows through a bank loan; but the cows refuse to give enough milk and the bank is after them; so they sell the cows and take a boat to Dubai; except the boatman fools them and they land in Madras...you get the drift.

Mammukoya as Gafoorka

As the plot progresses, the absurd twists keep coming. But we don't mind the convenient coincidences (Anthikad will have us believe that Madras is the size of our drawing room, the number of times his characters run into each other by fate) because we buy into Dasan and Vijayan so completely. And so, we root for them as they walk down the roads of Madras in "sheikh" costumes because they think it's Dubai, and laugh at them fondly when they're surprised to see a bus that goes to Paris (Parrys) from there.

Thilakan as Ananthan Nambiar

The supporting cast is also excellent, whether it's the toothy Mammukoya as Gafoorka, the boatman who teaches them Arabic phrases they need to live in Dubai (when he has no intention of taking them there), Thilakan as the wannabe drug lord Ananthan Nambiar ("Oh my GODDDD!"), Innocent as Baletta, the cab driver with a heart of gold, Janardhanan as the local political goon Kovai Venkatesan, and of course, Captain Raju as Pavanayi the assassin. 

Captain Raju as Pavanayi

Love and Lovelier

There's also romance in the film. Of the two, it is Dasan who wears his heart on his sleeve, developing crushes on any pretty, easily accessible woman. The first time he meets Radha (Shobana), a clerk at the accounts section in the new company that he's joined, he's miffed that she doesn't offer him a seat.

Thinking her to be a Tamilian, he mumbles in Malayalam that she's too arrogant and doesn't know how to respect a man. This dialogue, however, isn't delivered in the hyper-masculine way that it is in most superstar movies. And Radha quickly puts him in his place, giving a rejoinder in Malayalam.

They are neighbours too and slowly, their friendship grows. When Dasan whips around his BCom degree one too many times, Radha's mother lets it drop that her daughter is actually an MCom degree holder. The two women become something of an anchor to Dasan -- the scene when he goes to Radha's house to ask for kerosene and then all the ingredients for his meal, is superb. The rare compassion that Radha and her mother extend to him becomes a turning point in Dasan's life.

In cinema, it's uncommon for the heroine to call out the hero's weaknesses. But in Nadodikattu, it is Radha who offers Dasan insight and perspective. She points out that he seems to have too many "complexes" and that he can really make something of himself if he would let go of them. When Dasan loses his mother (it's a scene that suddenly brings tears to our eyes -- "Oru cheriya vishesham, ende amma marichupoyi"), it is she who offers him consolation. Though Shobana does not get too much screentime, the understated romance adds flavour to the film, making it lovelier and dearer to the audience.

Shobana as Radha

Nadodikkattu was such a big success that it generated two sequels - Pattanapravesham and Akkare Akkare Akkare. Dasan and Vijayan went on to have many more adventures, just as funny and mind-boggling, but the affection that the audience has for the first film has never dipped. The remakes too did well because the story, despite how culturally rooted it was in the telling, was universal - just two blokes living on the edge and trying not to fall off. And they somehow succeed because Dasan and Vijayan have each other to hold on to, come what may.