Kilukkam

A Malayalam comedy set in Ooty. Joji is a tourist guide. His friend Nishchal is a photographer. Both are looking for the easy way to make money and live off the tourists who come to the hill town. Then Nandini arrives. She appears wealthy and the two decide to invest in her. But what she says does not add up; her behaviour is odd and there is a story behind it. She is in fact looking for her father, and takes shelter in their house by presenting herself as not in her right mind. The film moves across genres: long stretches are pure comedy, then a family fight over inheritance enters and the register shifts to drama. That kind of transition was a common structure in Indian cinema of the period. Mohanlal plays Joji, Revathi plays Nandini and Jagathy Sreekumar the photographer. Priyadarshan directed. It opened in 1991 and became the highest-grossing Malayalam production of that year; it is still counted among the region's most-cited comedies and its songs remain well known. A foundational production within its genre for anyone who likes Indian comedy and Malayalam cinema of the 1990s. For a viewer expecting a tight narrative, the film is long, the plot is loose and the shifts of register are abrupt.