These Bluffmasters are FUN

Meaningful and logical comedies are rare to the extent of becoming non existent in Malayalam Cinema. Our comedies are mostly slapstick and rely a lot on double inneundoes to make the audience laugh. It is in the middle of all this that acclaimed Adman turned director VK Prakash has come up with "Gulumaal- the Escape" that has been inspired by Rohan Sippy's "Bluffmaster" starring Abhishek Bachchan and Priyanka Chopra.

Gulumaal is about Ravi Varma (Kunchacko Boban) who wants to earn some quick bucks to get his father (Nedumudi Venu) out of the financial mess that he has been in. He befriends Jerry (Jayasuriya), a habitual fraudster and together they hatch a plan to sell a fraudulent painting to a rich businessman (Devan), who is a connossieur of Fine Arts. Whether they succeed with the plan or not forms the rest of the plot.

In the middle of all this, we have Inspector Shambu (Suraj Venjarammoodu) who is out to book Ravi and Jerry. His attempts at nabbing the protagonists also contribute to evoking some laughs. The cops have been treated like cartoon characters and they should appeal to the young audience especially.

There is another track involving Jerry's family- his mother and younger brother who along with Jerry cannot see his sister (Mithra Kurien) eye to eye since they all believe that she was the reason why their father passed away.

The narrative goes through a lot of interesting incidents and culminates in a climax that is entertaining and unpredictable. Thanks to a strong storyline and an entertaining script (Y V Rajesh), Gulumaal manages to hold your interest till the end. Fowzia Fathima's frames and Mahesh Narayanan's editing are add- ons. V K Prakash manages to extract believable performances from the entire cast- this is a worthy comeback for Kunchacko Boban who plays his part very well. Mithra Kurien is promising. Salim Kumar, Manian pillai Raju, Devan and Nedumudi Venu are adequate. It is Jayasuriya who carries the entire film on his shoulders and puts in an extremely reliable performance. He literally lives as the fraudster who cares only for money. The only missing link in an otherwise complete script is the characterization of Jerry. No explanation is offered as to why Jerry turns out to conning people in spite of having been born into a respectable family.

Gulumaal is definitely worth a dekho with the entire family- you will enjoy this one!