Guruvayoor Ambalanadayil: Not As Funny As It Wants To Be

WRITER Deepu Pradeep is clearly obsessed with the enterprise and farce of the wedding. It has been at the centre of three of his scripts now — Kunjiramayanam (2015); Padmini (2023); and the latest Vipin Das directorial with its ominous title, Guruvayoor Ambalanadayil. At the entrance of Guruvayur Temple. If Vipin Das’s previous film, Jaya Jaya Jaya Hey (2022), imparted lightness to the toxicity of a nascent arranged marriage, his new film retains the lightness for the machinations of an upcoming one. The result is not perfect: intended to be an out-and-out comedy film, an old school version, not all of Guruvayoor Ambalanadayil works. It comes down to how it uses its talented ensemble, whose existence the writer and director seem to forget far too often.

Like with these family comedies, the plot is straightforward. Vinu (Basil Joseph), a successful young man in Dubai, is engaged to Anjali (Anaswara Rajan), and this after a five-year mourning period for the loss of his first love Parvathy who, according to him, didn’t wait and married the man her parents found for her. Vinu and Anjali are to be married at Guruvayur Temple and he strikes up a brotherhood with Anjali’s elder brother Anand (Prithviraj). A brotherhood so strong that he nonchalantly ignores Anjali to bond with Anandettan, who lives in Jamshedpur alone. Anand is like the elder brother and friend Vinu never had, helping him scatter the ashes of his first love, something Vinu never could until now.

Anand is married to Parvathy but also estranged from her because of his own reaction to a rumour, so loose a cannon that he is banned from flying. This is not a spoiler because after a point in the film almost every character is aware of this fact and the film turns into an idiotic plot. The narrative retains its novelty till the two families and friends on both sides go through the sham of wedding arrangements heavy with past feuds and relationships. But once the cat is out of the bag, all the air fizzles out.

The film milks comedy out of how obsessed Vinu and Anand are with each other, which are its strongest portions. Vinu even composes a litany of sweet nothings to unite Anand and Parvathy and succeeds. The whole situation is laughable because he cannot string two words together to speak affectionately if not romantically with his fiancé Anjali. Deepu Pradeep and Vipin Das also establish the long game. Every effort to stop the wedding on Vinu’s part fails spectacularly and quickly, only for it to bite him later when he wants to go ahead with the marriage.

The plot requires a reasonable amount of suspension of disbelief; in the modern age and with a film that slaps WhatsApp notifications on screen, that a man is unaware of the identity of his would-be-brother-in-law’s wife is a bit much. They throw in a scene about an inadequate background check. However, this is still something we can get past in a film with such modest ambitions. The real disappointment is in how the film fails to even fulfil such low expectations. It relies too heavily on Prithviraj and Basil’s characters, their friendship-turned-rivalry, at the expense of a host of so many great actors and characters.

For a film that follows Jaya Jaya Jaya Hey, it is rather conspicuous that the women in this film are sidelined. But this is not about the women in the film being ignored. It is about the calibre of these actors. Both Anaswara Rajan and Nikhila Vimal are wonderful actors and with a film that requires comic timing as much as physicality for its slapstick and screwball nature, it would have been great to see stronger arcs for them with more scenes, and even for Jagadish and Rekha. The film is comfortable being just about the ego clashes of several men by the end — Parvathy’s ex-boyfriend, Anjali’s elder brother, Vinu’s old rival, Anjali’s spurned lover, the older patriarchs in the family with their own agenda.

The film succeeds in providing entertainment in a broad sense but never delivers on its promise of a comedy. It wants to be screwball by the end, what with the crowded Guruvayur Temple as the climax location, but all it can manage is an Aju Varghese cameo song, an unimaginative fight sequence and an elaborate Nandanam (2002) callback with Aravind Akash sauntering about. Guruvayoor Ambalanadayil is simply not as funny as Deepu Pradeep and Vipin Das want it to be.