Hridayapoorvam Review | Mohanlal Breezes Through This Predictable Sathyan Anthikad Package

The last movie that came from Sathyan Anthikad was the 2022 film Makal, which received criticism for glorifying insensitive parenting. Almost 3 years after that film, Sathyan Anthikad teams up with Mohanlal for their new movie titled Hridayapoorvam. The Story this time was from Akhil Sathyan, who made Pachuvum Athbutha Vilakkum, and for the screenplay, Sathyan Anthikad teamed up with a newcomer named Sonu TP. When you look at the overall tonality of Hridayapoorvam, it feels like Sathyan Anthikad trying to muscle into the new way of storytelling and struggling to shed what is frequently associated with his movies. The humor is the area where we will see the director somewhat tasting success. When it comes to emotions, he plays it safe, relying on the familiar structure.

Sandeep Balakrishnan is a restaurant owner in Kochi who underwent heart transplant surgery. Col. Ravindran was the one from whom Sandeep received the heart, and during his post-surgery recovery phase, Ravindran’s daughter Haritha pays him a visit, asking him to be a part of her engagement. What we see in Hridayapoorvam are the events that unfold in the life of Sandeep during that visit to Pune.

When this movie reaches the interval point, there is a funny conflict that sort of fits nicely into the picture, considering the age and looks of Mr. Mohanlal. A part of your mind would feel how Sathyan Anthikad would handle the movie on such a slippery slope. Recently, in an interview, he said that when themes become slightly serious and sensitive, he often skips those ideas as he believes humor is his way, and some other filmmaker should handle such topics. In Hridayapoorvam, he sort of avoids that grey zone by jumping into the humor track and uses his signature goodness package to keep things engaging. And with the correct amount of Sangeeth Prathap at regular intervals, the movie is staying in that non-boring zone.

The Story of this movie is credited to Akhil Sathyan, and one can sense a lot of structural similarities between this movie and Pachu. An unmarried man who got rejected by a woman is now in a new city for a few days. Much like Pachu, who only means business, Sandeep is also pretty self-oriented, and we see him even declining the invite at the beginning. The character of Haritha has similarities with Hamsadhwani, and much like Pachu, we have this mountain-top emotional scene in this movie as well. If it was brother for Dhwani, it is the father figure for Haritha.

Like I already said, Sathyan Anthikad is trying to make a modern-day version of all the characters he used to create. Sonu TP, in many ways, is helping him get the lingo of the generation. There are many places where you can see the louder style of Sathyan Anthikad becoming a misfit for this kind of Story. But there are instances where the conventionally sentimental bits address the humorous side of it, and both the movie and the audience laugh at the situation. Anu Moothedath has handled the cinematography, and since the mood of the film never slips into a moody zone, the vibrant visual palette of the movie, even on a production design level, goes well with the film. Justin Prabhakaran’s music has that soulfulness much similar to Pachuvum Athbutha Vilakkum. This movie was done using production sound mixing, aka sync sound. Except for Sangeetha, almost everyone’s sound is being captured live here. It is adding a layer of realness to the movie, and in that climax speech by Mohanlal, they have retained the lip-smacking, which added genuineness to that performance.

The signature effortlessness and the physique make Mohanlal a good choice for the role of Sandeep Balakrishnan. In most of the scenes in the movie, he is on the defensive side, and that is a space where he scores in humor. The movie is not blowing your mind by showing something that is extremely unexplored. However, Mohanlal’s handling of humor with ease in those predictable situations is keeping the movie afloat. Malavika Mohanan is someone who is comfortable in saying Marathi and Malayalam, and her choice makes sense. In the initial bits, I thought she was making an effort to sound like someone who was born and brought up in Pune. But as the movie shifted to Pune, her Malayalam became the Malayalam of someone who used to come to Payyannur for vacations, and frankly, that Malayalam felt nice. Sangeeth Prathap’s character is basically the source of humor in this film, and he is not integral to the Story. However, they have utilized the energy Sangeeth adds to the scene to negate the sentimental overdose or emotional flatness certain scenes might end up having. Sangeetha, with the dubbing of Bhagyalakshmi, did her part neatly. Even though some of the comedy featuring Siddique was funny, in totality, that character and some of the other side tracks did not gel well with the movie. And I felt that they could have easily created the same emotional impact, even with a runtime of two hours.

Hridayapoorvam is a breezy feel-good film that succeeds in hiding its genericness by extracting the humorous side of Mohanlal. There are a lot of people who find comfort in the movie Pachuvum Athbutha Vilakkum despite knowing that it follows a certain template, which can be called a neo-Sathyan Anthikad style. Hridayapoorvam is one more to that zone of filmmaking which doesn’t bother about repeating itself.