Godfather

Lal's 1991 Malayalam film tells the story of a long feud between two families as comedy. The enmity between the Anjooran and Anappara houses is shaken when two young people fall in love, and that is where its kinship with Romeo and Juliet lies. The film had one of the longest theatrical runs in Malayalam cinema and its lines are still in circulation. The comedy comes from everyone knowing how meaningless the feud is while nobody will back down. N. N. Pillai's patriarch is at the centre; his stage-trained playing gives the tone its weight. The women characters are thinly written and it runs long. Who it's for: viewers who like Malayalam comedy and Indian cinema of the nineties. Who it's not for: anyone wanting a tightly built story, or troubled by the gender conventions of the period.