Ente Ummante Peru begins with a wedding and a death (no, it is not going to be like Four Weddings and a Funeral). The wedding is to set the place and its language – Thalassery and northern Malayalam, to introduce our hero Hameed (Tovino Thomas), his two main supporters played by Harish Kanaran and Mammukoya. The death is of Hameed’s dad and it plays a crucial part in the script – that’s what makes Hameed an etheem (orphan) and begins his search for his hitherto unknown mother.
The dad is not shown except as a photo in the end. So at the funeral, you see visitors look down on a body that is off the screen for you and in a photo hanging on a wall of one of dad’s friends, only his face is unclear.
As soon as the death happens, everyone has just one thought – now that Hameed is an orphan, who will agree to marry him. That’s new. Here was a grown-up lad living in a big house with a business his father left him, and the death of a parent would make him an “unsuitable” hand for marriage? But that thought is continuously echoed, till Hameed gets into his head to find out who this mysterious mother is.
His dad had never told him that. Or any of his close friends including Hamsa (Mammukoya). And Hameed complains like a ten-year-old that dad never told him anything. Every few minutes you have to wonder if Hameed is a grown-up or a hapless toddler the way he is fussed over by everyone around him. “I am there with you, you are not alone,” Hareesh Kanaran as Beeran has to keep telling him in his northern Malayalam that the actor is known for. Tovino makes an attempt to get the slang right too, but seems to forget about it at times.
As soon as the mourning for the dad is over, Hameed and gang go for a ‘pennu kaanal’. He likes Sainaba (Saipriya). To get married is obviously the only aim of his life, even the search for a mother is not for the mother itself, but to qualify as “a suitable boy”.
He finds out dad had married twice and reckons one of these should be his mother. The search takes him to Urvashi, playing Aishu. Aishu does not know to behave, speaks rudely to people, and orders everyone around. Beeran and Hamsa do not like Aishu. But that’s alright for Hameed, as long as she comes along to fix his marriage with Sainaba.
The scenes with Tovino and Urvashi do not evoke the sentiments it's supposed to. The mother-son equation does not work for the larger part of the movie. Except in a scene or two when Tovino watches her little motherly acts fondly and do not make speeches about it. That however makes up only in a small way for the mostly flawed script.
The idea itself is not new but there was scope for first-time director Jose Sebastian to explore new sides of it. The search of a parent has become a pretty tiresome theme but the novelty comes because it is the mother the son goes in search of. It is not the usual tale of the bastard son’s revenge. Hameed could have been given more depth (and maturity), the dad could have been more described – why did he keep everything a secret. Why is Hameed in such a hurry to get married? The story lacks depth and the characters are uninteresting. The one who scores here is Urvashi – she does marvelously as the unlikeable Aishu, and speaks the northern slang beautifully. If only the script could be tuned around a little.
Disclaimer: This review was not paid for or commissioned by anyone associated with the film. Neither TNM nor any of its reviewers have any sort of business relationship with the film's producers or any other members of its cast and crew.