Written and Directed by Nandha Periyasamy, Samuthirakkani’s “Thiru.Manickam” (2024) is a story of what makes a good Samaritan. It narrates the tale of Manickam, a lottery ticket shop owner and a father of two girls in Kumily, Kerala, and his perilous journey to take a lottery ticket to its rightful owner after the ticket wins a bumper prize. The film tries to underline what honesty is and how much Manickam believes in it despite financially struggling to meet the medical expenses of his sick daughter.
Manickam lives in a joint family and struggles to make ends meet. With debts piling on and a daughter who is in dire need of surgery, he is asked to relocate his shop paving the way for a mall construction. However, ironically he still has enough to lead a decent lifestyle and even go on small trips with his family and a freeloader brother-in-law.
One day, an old man distraught with his pregnant daughter, troubling in-laws, and poverty-stricken life buys a lottery ticket from him. However, unable to pay for the ticket, he promises to return with money. Days later, this ticket wins the bumper prize of 1.1 crore and a determined Manickam sets on a journey to return the ticket to its rightful owner. Manickam doesn’t know his name, his place, or anything about him to begin with.
To make his journey patchy and troublesome, Manickam’s wife and family try to brainwash him to return with the ticket. When she realizes that nothing will budge her husband from his stubborn decision, she threatens to kill herself and approaches the cops. A determined Manickam is chased relentlessly by policemen who dream of keeping the lottery prize for themselves.
A premise like this has all the room below the sky for a tender and heartwarming film, but writer-director Nandha Periyasamy churns out an overly dramatic, boring, and stretched melodrama where a whole camp of talented actors get wasted, including Ananya and Samuthirakani. The message in the film is anything but subtle and sticks out like a pricking needle that serves no purpose.
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Besides spoon-fed messaging, the film bakes an outdated backstory to Manickam and the good samaritan who adopted him. This backstory comes at the most irrelevant point in the narrative and makes no sense to the happenings that follow. There are also bits and pieces of token secularism in the form of a Christian Father, a Christian cyber crime officer, and a Muslim bhai who molded Manickam into who he is today. Malayalam cinema did this way better without the bulging exaggeration and unsubtle moral lessons in the early 2010s.
Nandha Periyasamy’s writing is too convenient, and predictable and lacks the freshness a story like this deserves. The narrative unfolds like a 90s run-of-the-mill movie that is simply obsessed with its expository messaging and moral takeaways. “Thiru. Manickam” begins and ends like two different movies where characters come in and leave without a purpose or character arc. Besides taking the audience’s creative intelligence for granted, the makers of “Thiru. Manickam” also underuse its actors. Nassar, Vadivukkarasi, and Thambi Ramaiah are given raw deals. Nassar plays the most typical elderly savior character and Ananya’s character transforms from a supportive friendly wife to an opportunistic woman in a flash. Bharathiraja and Vadivukkarasi play a template old-age couple with a typical sob story to trigger emotions.
However, Samuthirakkani still makes the film watchable. His character is too good to be true and can get a bit annoying on paper, but is convincingly portrayed onscreen. His family-man character is pleasing to the eyes, and his honesty is quite believable. But, what sticks out like a sore thumb is the lengthy speech his character gives at the end. Funnily enough, the film shows Manickam becoming a social media sensation on his journey back to Kumily from Idukki which is again an over-exaggeration that might have worked in the early 2000s.
While social media attention towards good deeds like these is not unbelievable, an impact this big within a mere two-hour journey is a bit too much. The film intentionally or unintentionally carves a messiah out of Manickam and doesn’t try to redeem other characters, including his family. They are not bad people; they are simply human enough to get swayed by responsibilities. Slice-of-life drama is a genre that can work even today, but the execution should never fall short of intentions.
“Thiru. Manickam” fails as a film with its outdated sensibilities, messaging, and convenient narrative, stuffed in a modern pretext. If the writers had centered the story around two fathers and their daughters, “Thiru. Manickam” could have been a much stronger film. Despite its noble and straightforward premise, the exaggerated execution reduces it to an overwrought melodrama—one that feels at least two decades past its time.
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