Shefeekkinte Santosham movie review: Unni Mukundan gives it his all but the script runs out of ideas fast

2.5/5

Story: Shafeek, a do-gooder who aims to keep people around him happy, is set to return from Kerala to Dubai for his wedding. He decides to bring a gift for an ayurveda doctor, who helped him out of a predicament. Just when everything is peaches and cream, the police arrive at Shafeek’s doorstep during his engagement ceremony. What repercussions will this have on his life?

Review: In the late 80s and 90s, there have been plenty of Malayalam movies that reflected the life of people in certain villages. The characters themselves were unique and added to the vibrance in the story, even though they contributed very little to the actual plot of the film. In Shefeekkinte Santosham, director Anup Pandalam tries to set most of the story in a small village – where neighbours are at each other’s throats for walking on their plot and the youngsters have each other’s backs. Amid this is the protagonist, Shefeek (Unni Mukundan), a proverbial do-gooder who finds joy in making others happy.

The movie starts with Shefeek set to return to Kerala from the UAE, for his marriage. But in the middle of a conversation with another friend, he quickly recounts a story of how he had to check in at an ayurveda hospital for piles treatment. This includes a doctor (Manoj K Jayan), who moonlights as a serial actor, and a receptionist, who he develops a soft corner for. Shefeek decided to get a gift for the doctor out of gratitude, but this very gesture gets into deep trouble. From then on, it becomes all about how Shefeek’s kind nature is never appreciated or rewarded; in fact, he almost loses everything he held dear.

Even though the character does have similarity to Unni’s previous film Meppadiyan, in terms of how his Good Samaritan nature comes back to bite him, the actor does show that he is flexible when it comes to doing emotional roles. He gives it all in the final 20 minutes of the movie, which is when the movie finds its soul through a poignant sequence between Shefeek and his family.

The comedy in the movie is largely a miss. Bala, as a Tamil autodriver friend of Shefeek, gets few laughs, apart from Manoj K Jayan and Anup, who is hilarious in the sequence where he practises a song in front of his fiancée’s photo. Both Divya Pillai and Athmiya Rajan don't get too much to work with in the film. However, the movie feels rather drawn out because the core idea is small and unexplored, and so the filmmaker decided to create the mountain out of molehill situations of its supporting characters. Though he connects this to Shefeek’s story, it feels disjointed. For instance, you don’t quite empathise with Shefeek in the latter half because the relationship between him and Sainu isn’t fleshed out. It’s almost mentioned in passing as some of Shefeek’s other virtues. The cinematography of the movie also feels cluttered while the songs only stretch the movie further.

Verdict: While Anup doesn’t resort to any experiments with the storytelling format, the movie’s scripts runs out of idea too fast and becomes a stretch, even with a duration of just two hours.