Classmates

Last Friday saw Classmates at Roopam theatre in Chennai. The movie released for Onam with such biggies like BhargavaCharitham and MahaSamudhram. While the other movies were washed away like paper boats in a storm, Classmates is still going on strong at the box-office and has become the highest grossing Malayalam movie of all time, breaking the record of Rajamanikyam.

The movie has all the stars of the youth brigade-Prithviraj, Jayasurya, Sunil, Indrajit and Kavya. An excellent screenplay complemented by beautiful songs and top class direction by Lal Jose, has proved that Malayalam cinema can break out from the circle of M&M.

The film opens with a retired college professor Iyer (Balachandra Menon) and his wife retired Chemistry professor Lakshmi (Shoba Mohan) trying to organize a get-together of the 1991 batch of CMS college, Kottayam. This meeting is also in memory of Murali (Narein) the college singer and their only son who died under mysterious circumstances during his final year.
The 1991 batch agrees to meet as each of them has their own personal agendas to be fulfilled. Murali’s parents want to keep his promise that the batch will meet after 10 years of graduation. The group leader is Sukumaran (Pritviraj), a fiery leader of left student party SFK, now a diamond merchant in Mumbai, Satheesan Kanjikuzhi (Jayasurya) led the rival student party DSU and is now an MLA, his right-hand man ‘Vaalu’ Vasu (Vijeesh) is his PA.

Then there is a rich planter’s son Pious George (Indrajeet) who was the college Romeo and a close friend of Sukumaran, now settled in Gulf. There is Thara Kurup (Kavya Madhavan) a well-known classical dancer whose father was a politician and a minister. Thara now runs a dance school and is a spinster still madly in love with Sukumaran. Razia (Radhika) the ‘Penquin’ as she is called for wearing a peculiar kind of burkha is also a part of the gang.

On the night of the reunion Sukumaran is strangled with a string from Murali's guitar, but he is taken to the hospital where he battles for his life. The mystery deepens and the climax shows who the killer was.

The songs Ente Khalbile.... and Kaathirunnu Pennalae..... are topping the charts.

Best wishes for the youth brigade to act in many more blockbusters.

Mahesh's rating-****/5.

Definitely worth watching.

P.S.- The Telugu remake rights have already been bought for a bomb of a price, so do not be surprised if you get to see a Tamil version of Classmates starring Vijay in a year's time.