Maniyarayile Ashokan review: A rom-com that leaves you scratching your head

Maniyarayile Ashokan (Netflix)
Cast: Gregory, Anupama Parameswaran, Krishna Sankar, Shine Tom Chacko
Director: Shamzu Zayba
Rating: 1/5

'Maniyarayile Ashokan' tries to capture the smalltown quirks but fails due to an unpolished script and over-the-top acting.

The movie, the second release by Dulquer Salmaan’s Wayfarer Films, begins with a voiceover by the actor and a song introducing village belle Unnimaya. We see the men of the village, the young and the old and even criminals running from the police, fawning over this girl going about her business. After much ado, you realise that Unnimaya nor her fabled beauty plays a role in the film. But it does set the tone for the movie — a half baked story, with characters and scenarios thrown in without any relevance and a background score that almost encourages you to cringe at scenes and not in a good way.

The story revolves around an unlucky-in-love government clerk Ashokan, played by Jacob Gregory, albeit not very well. His sole aim in the first half of the film is to get married. He finds a girl too, but their relationship is thwarted by a problem in his horoscope.

The solution? Marry a plantain plant. Ashokan who was once rejected by a potential bride for being “short, dark and unattractive” goes around his farm looking for a not too tall, not too fat, beautiful tree for himself. What should have been a mere transactional act turns into delusion. With Ashokan falling into what is portrayed as a deep depression when his flowering (pregnant to him) plant is cut down. What pulls him back is the birth of his twins, two saplings from the mother plant. Yes, you read that right; he even names them and protects them obsessively.

While the movie must be given props for depicting a counselling centre as a solution, it's not the therapy that proves to be beneficial. It's an over-the-top one-liner, one of many in the film, from his cousin Arjun, a cameo by DQ that serves no purpose other than this magical cure.

Filled to the brim with an abundance of characters, it takes no time to develop them. For instance, we know his friend Shyju has problems in his marriage and its resolution is even used as a character arc, but we are left not knowing why this holds significance. It introduces a host of women who appear and disappear with no trace, quite ironic in a movie about marriage. Even Ashokan remains a mystery, we do not sympathise nor do we understand why he yearns for a wedding or why he finds love with a plant. It’s rather difficult to enjoy a film that gives you no room to grow fond of its characters.