2005- An analysis

Malayalam cinema never had it so good. 2005 has been the year of blockbusters- “Rajamanickam”, “Chanthupottu”, “Naran”, “Thommanum Makkalum” and ‘Udayananu Tharam”.
The message is loud and clear- Malayalam cinema is superstar driven. Nearly 95 percent of box-office gross comes from Mammootty, Mohanlal and Dileep films and they rule Kerala’s commercial cinema circuit.
So it is but natural that Malayalam cinema revolves around them and scripts are written keeping their age and image in mind. Only one film that made money without any superstars is Achuvinte Amma.
Today Malayalam cinema is similar to the 70’s and 80’s Amitabh Bachchan or a present day Rajnikanth or Vijay type formula films. The hero is the one-man entertainment troupe where he provides action, comedy, romance and drama!
The superstars play larger-than-life characters with distinctive style in get-up, dialogue delivery, costumes, dancing, fighting and above all punch line dialogues which become household usages like –“Yevan Puliyanuketta….” (“Rajamanickam”) which has virtually replaced the one-time favourite “Nee Po Mone Dinesha… (“Narasimham”).
In 2005, all films with young heroes failed to impress Malayalees as none of them could create any impact at the box-office. Most of them did not run for more than a week and were duds. Only “Ananthabhadram” sold on Sathosh Sivan’s name was able to recover the cost.
2005 saw the migration of Malayalee girls to other languages and other-language heroines making a beeline to Kerala to be the heroines of superstars. The year also saw the come back of Suresh Gopi in “Bharathchandran IPS” an average hit.

Vadakkumnathan` delayed?

The release date of Mohanlal’s musical odyssey Vadakkumnathan is once again postponed. The film was slated for Ramzan release but was shifted to November 17 and again to 24th.The latest we hear is that the new release date is yet to be fixed as producer Govindan Kutty and distributor Johhny Sagarika are yet to come to a financial understanding.
A peeved Mohanlal who had waved a part of his salary for the release of the film, is now in a fix as his ambitious off-beat film Tanmatra is also getting ready for release. Tanmatra is directed by Blessy and is scheduled for Christmas on December 16. This means that even if Vadakkumnathan releases on December 1 there is hardly two weeks for the release of Tanmatra.
But trade sources say that it is highly unlikely for Vadakkumnathan to release this year and will be pushed further to a January 2006 release. In the meantime Mohanlal will try to sort out the issues between the producer and distributor