Saturday, April 23, 2011

Pranjiyettan and the saint

A Thrissur based businessman named Francis aka Pranjiyettan visits St. Francis of Asisi's Church to take blessings for some important affairs in his life.  Inside the vacant Church, he encounters St. Francis Asisi in human form and cannot believe his good luck. Some banter ensues and  thereafter, Pranjiyettan tells his life story to St. Francis.  The full movie is in flash back mode and ends after Pranjiyettan finishes narrating his story and asks St. Francis for his advice.


Pranjiyettan as a person, craves for recognition, which he feels world has not been generous in giving to him.  As a kid, he was not good at studies, lost his lady love to his arch rival (Dr. Jose played by Siddique), never passed SSLC, but in business, everything he touched turned into gold.  But still "ari"Pranji  (rice pranji)  has stuck to his name as they have been rice merchants for generations.  Pranjiyettan has ventured into many business just to get rid of the nick name "ari" (rice).  He has been involved in many charities and philanthropic activities.  His man Friday Vasu menon (played by Innocent) is never short of ideas to make "Pranjiyettan" the most talked about man in Thrissur corporation, but the ideas usually fail big time.  He discusses all of these with St. Francis of Asisi and finally tells him how his latest venture of getting Padma Sree award  also backfires, but he eventually does get "Padmasree", does not he? ;-)...... but no spilling beans here.....


Mammokka as Pranjiyettan is superb...In Rajamanikyam, he had deftly spoken Thiruvananthapuram slang and now in this movie, he has done the same with Thrissur slang, but I guess, for a person of his caliber, it may be just another character, just another performance, if I may use a cricketing analogy, something like another hundred for Sachin.


There was a only a minor glitch ( i felt), which is related to a boy who comes in later in the story and who along with Padmasree is the crux of the story, and who is also the reason Pranjiyettan has come to Church.


Overall, another entertaining movie from the stable of Ranjith.

5 comments:

unknown poet said...

yes the movie was jus superb..loved it...and every1 must watch it...:)..

Unknown said...

yes UP.....i agree.....:-)

Govind Raj said...

Deekay, I felt you have been too stingy with words. Being a Karnataka chap who learned Malayalam after coming to Kerala in 1995, I have come to admire the Malayalam movies. Movies like Panchavati Paalam, Sandesam are not made in any other languages.

For me, Prachiettan is nothing short of a Classic. It is beautiful and the boy angle is the most beautiful part of the movie. Can I post my own view [I am not good at review] of the movie here ? If so, please give me the lead and you will get a Non-Malayali's view on a Malayalam movie !

Unknown said...

haha....doctor saab...u r most welcome...it will be a privilege to have u here....

Unknown said...

i have sent u an invitation at ur blogger profile gtalk id....now cmg to the point, the glitch that i felt was....how come the incident in boy's life was unknown to those in school?? come on..it is not a common place occurrence...there was an underlying reason why the kid was not interested in studying, a kid who was topper in school until class ix, suddenly does not want to study and is failing in all subjects in class x....does not that feels strange? and the school faculty is oblivious to his suffering? even the principal presents him as an "ahamkari" to us viewers.....but the movie otherwise was good...(now...i am not being stingy)..it was gr8, but this was just a minor glitch...in what was otherwise a gr8 experience.....