Mandakini

Story: Aromal and Ambili are faced with a problem from the past on their wedding night. Will they manage to resolve it and start a happy married life?

Review: Somewhere Mandakini had an interesting thread about a young couple, played by Althaf Salim and Anarkali Marikar, who unwittingly learns more about each other than they expected on their wedding night. But the film focuses inexplicably on extended drinking sequences and simplistic jokes and loses out on the story.

Amid Aromal and Ambili’s wedding night festivities, the groom’s brother-in-law and friend decide to make him a cocktail to give him Dutch courage on his ‘first night’. But Ambili ends up drinking it and in her drunken state tells her new husband and his family about her old boyfriend, Sujit Vasu, played by Ganapathi, and how he cheated her.

Aromal’s widowed mother, Rajalakshmi, essayed by the feisty Saritha Kukku, decides to take matters into her hands and resolve the issue once and for all, either so that Ambili leaves with Sujit or stays on as her daughter-in-law.

On a positive note, the film showcases strong women without judgment and in a good light. Rajalakshmi was a young widow who raised two children, and she drinks and runs a driving school business, and won’t take any nonsense from anybody. Aromal and Ambili have sweet moments as a new couple.

But the story is stretched out with jokes and situations that are just not compelling enough. And the number of scenes showing various characters drinking or having consumed alcohol almost seems like a weird fixation. The scripting by Shiju M Bhaskar and Shalu is weak and Vinod Leela’s direction does not do much to lift it.