‘Neeyum Njanum’ threads together an exceedingly prolonged strand of events that fails to have an emotional impact on the viewers. Drained of specificity, ‘Neeyum Njanum’ makes use of stock romantic situations and bundles them together as a cluttered whole.
A K Sajan tries out every conflict in the trade to make his love tale appealing, and yet ‘Neeyum Njanum’ goes nowhere new. Bereft with one cinematic quirk after the other and stretching a recognizable idea to more than feature length, it’s an exhausting romance that leaves everyone around, and not just its protagonists, worn out to the core.
Yakub (Sharafudeen) is smitten when he sets his eyes on Hashmi (Anu Sithara) for the first time, and starts following her around, much to her chagrin. She exasperatedly reveals to him that things cannot be as he had planned, as she cannot get over the first, and whom she believes to the last love of her life, Shanu (Siju Wilson), who has disappeared without a trace.
Yakub persists, and announces that he will wait for as long as it takes. He even quits his job as a police officer, which makes Hashmi rethink her decision. The couple gets married, and on Hashmi’s insistence, Yakub heads over to the Gulf, where he gets imprisoned for a money fraud that he did not commit.
‘Neeyum Njanum’ is about all the storms that Yakub and Hashmi wade through, which would also include, all the gust of formulaic elements in the writing that boxes it firmly into a tried and tested genre. And the one thing that totally appals you about A K Sajan’s ‘Neeyum Njanum’ is its unforgivable running time of more than two and a half hours.
The latter half of the film is one that brings in for the umpteenth time, a contemporary, and yet much overdone issue by now – that of moral policing. Sajan tries hard to deliver a blow at almost everyone concerned, but the social satire that it suddenly turns out to be is certainly not what it had set out to be in the beginning.
‘Neeyum Njanum’ falls quite low in execution, which is evident in the scene where a bunch of men who have gathered outside Hashmi’s home, locks her up inside with someone whom they believe to be her paramour. As the ruckus grows outside, a rat runs into a trap set for it inside the house, as if in further verification as to what had happened.
There is much more to the rat, believe me, and the less said about it, the better. There is obviously a lot of subtext to be read into here, whether or not you are in a mood to do so. For those who suspect that I am being sardonic, all I would say is that the animal intervention is a bit too much to handle, despite all the good naturedness that it has in mind.
Come to think of it, there is a smart aside that involves Dileesh Pothen and Surabhi Lekshmi that totally brings down the house. Despite the tonal irregularity that it brings about, it is one of the few scenes in the latter half that keeps you entertained.
The three lead performances in ‘Neeyum Njanum’ are real good – the ever dependable Anu Sithara as terrifically impressive as ever, Sharafudeen who bowls us over with a charmingly naive smile that eventually gives way to a dull grimace and Siju Wilson who retains the right amount of mystery about the role that he essays.
‘Neeyum Njanum’ threads together an exceedingly prolonged strand of events that fails to have an emotional impact on the viewers. Drained of specificity, ‘Neeyum Njanum’ makes use of stock romantic situations and bundles them together as a cluttered whole.
Verdict: Average