Amar Akbar Anthony (2015 film)

Plot

Faizal (Asif Ali), born and bred Kochi bike-stunt artist, gets injured during one of his bike stunts and gets hospitalised. He is admitted in the general ward, and there he meets other patients and begins to chat to know each other. His ward mates queries how he fell. Faizal explains the reason by narrating a story about his three best friends Amar (Prithviraj), Akbar (Jayasurya) and Anthony (Indrajith). Amar, Akbar and Anthony lives in a slum area in Fort Kochi, three of them are from poor families.

Amar is children's mini-kart driver in a shopping mall and is a lecher with a number of unsuccessful loves. Other than him he has four members in his family. His father Narayanan (Sasi Kalinga) is a security officer of a roadside ATM counter, his mother (K. P. A. C. Lalitha) is an expanding colony marriage broker and Resmiya (Srinda Ashab), an orphan women who lives together in their house with her daughter Fathima/Pathumma (Baby Meenakshi) after her husband flees away with her gold ornaments, for the marriage was arranged by Amar's mother.

Akbar is a handicap due to Poliomyelitis. His father (Abu Salim) is a body builder and a Mr. Cochin winner and is still preparing for competitions, while his mother (Bindu Panicker) is the home-maker.

Anthony works as a pizza delivery staff in a mall. He was adopted by his father (Pradeep Kottayam) when found left alone inside a movie theatre as a new born child.

Three of them have a common enemy 'Nallavanyana Unni' (Ramesh Pisharody) aka Unni whom their parents consider as a standard benchmark to compare them. Apart from their usual work they occasionally work as catering service boys for marriages and other functions under Rejimon (Saju Navodaya). Rejimon loves to talk about the disasters occurred in others life and revels in them. His grandmother (Molly Kannamaly), a septuagenarian who have found freedom through mobile phone and engage in several social networking sites. She even once made Amar fall in love with her through Facebook chatting, through one of her fake profile as a young girl studying in standard twelve.

All the three have a crush towards Jeni (Namitha Pramod), their neighbour and a dance-bar/cinematic performer. The three amigos have an ambition to go for a tour at Pattaya beach in Thailand with the immoral intend to score with women and flirt with modern lively girls. For this they save money from their monthly salary. For the trip they plans to save ₹25,000, to get the visa and ticket through Faizal. But every year when they manage to collect the required money, there will be some unexpected issues forcing to spend that money, each time. This time Amar's father was met with an accident (for which the cash was spend). He was saved timely by Ambulance driver Jadayu Sabu (Kalabhavan Shajon) with whom the trio becomes friendly. Jeni reveals her love interest to Akbar. Later, Gentleman Unni gets arrested for illegally growing and selling marijuana. Meanwhile, Rejimon's grandmother passes away. As colony association annual day nears, the colony members gets ready for carnival programs which includes Jeni orchestrated dance program and Fathima's solo song. The inebriated trio make a fight during the festival because Akbar finds the man who punched him in a car park. During the chaos, Fathima goes missing. The next day, a boy comes to the family to inform that Fathima's body was found in a dump. Police verifies that similar girls under the age ten are missing from surrounding area and several of their abused dead-body is found in various places. Police suspect a habitual pedophile Bengali who was convicted for similar charges in Bengal and might have relocated with the migrant working community to Cochin, after his release. Identity of this man is confirmed by the trio and they find him. However, before invoking their final vengeance they are intervened by the Police and to their shock are informed that it wasn't the Bengali who killed their Fathima but the colony's beloved Sir (V. K. Sreeraman), he was outed by a victim of his pedophilic abuse. Both the Bengali and the Sir are brutally murdered as a social justice and cleansing of the community by the people of the colony. The police knowing the legal protection that these criminals would have turns a blind-eye condoning to the people's justice.

Faizal, ends his story with this and ward mates sympathize with his story and reminds him that he didn't tell how this story is related to his broken leg. It is revealed that Faizal was their travel agent for Pattaya tour and the trip for ₹25,000 was a lie for him to get ₹25,000 and it had resulted in his accident that broke his leg as the proverb says "If the dumb is cheated by the miser, the miser gets cheated by God". Later the trio are shown donating a prime share of their money to Child Save Social Work Projects and the much alluded secret song that Anthony uses to make women fall flat in love with him is disclosed as the anti-popular meme of the song Puthiya Mukham.

Cast

Production

Former mimicry artist and actor Nadirshah is making his directorial debut with Amar Akbar Anthony. Prithviraj, Indrajith and Jayasurya are reuniting after the much popular film Classmates (2006). Mimicy artists and debutant script writers Bibin and Vishnu completed the film's screenplay in three years time. And they narrated the script to Nadirshah whom they know for a long period. At the end of the two hours narration Nadirshah showed interest in directing the film. After that they approached Jayasurya for roping him for one of the three lead roles. And enjoyed the script and signed to do the film. For the second lead role they considered Prithviraj, but was skeptical about approaching him with their script as they considered him as an actor who had done some films which has much acclaimed screenplays. But finally they narrated the script to him and to their surprise he was very much interested in it and signed for the role.

The film was originally scheduled for 70 days with an estimated budget of ₹7 crore (US$1.0 million), but was completed in 65 days with a production cost approximately ₹6.70 crore (US$1.0 million).

Sony Music India released the trailer on 5 October 2015. One day before the official release, the trailer was leaked on the video sharing website YouTube on 4 October which was later removed by YouTube. The trailer garnered about two lakh views in two days.

Release and reception

The film was released on 16 October 2015 in India. The television satellite right was sold to Surya TV.

Critical reception

International Business Times rated 4/5 and said, "Amar Akbar Anthony is sure to make you laugh with some fresh homage comedy throughout. It also asks the youngsters to be more reactant to the social issues of these days as in the 80's", and also commented that the film will take us back to the days of good old comedy entertainers of the late 80's and 90's in Malayalam films with modern elements of story presentation. Sify.com said, "How much you enjoy Amar Akbar Anthony will depend on your liking for loud, verbal comedy. Even if you are not a great fan of such jokes, this film can keep you entertained." Filmibeat.com rated the film 3 in a scale of 5, calling it "comical extravaganza" and stating that "the debutant filmmaker has succeeded in bringing out the best from his actors; without losing the grip over the high-dose comical situations." The reviewer also noted that "the rich comical situations and racy climax makes the movie engaging.". Malayala Manorama rated 3 out of 5 stars and said "As the film tries to capture everything in the running time. Nadhirshah skilfully maintains a pace in the plot and effortlessly switches between fillers, comedy and thriller, like a seasoned director".

Box office

The film grossed ₹5.10 crore (US$760,000) in 3 days from Kerala and ₹52 lakhs from rest of India. It grossed more than ₹11.20 crore within 8 days of its release with a net amount of ₹9.02 crore. The film grossed ₹16.3 crore within 14 days of release. And ₹22.6 crore (US$3.4 million) in 21 days. The film collected ₹28 crore from worldwide boxoffice.

Music

The music of the film is composed by Nadirshah himself, while the lyrics were written by Santhosh Varma, Bapu Vavad and Nadirshah. The background score was done by Bijibal. The music album comprises five tracks. The audio music of the film was officially launched by Nivin Pauly and Dileep by unveiling the audio CD at the function. The event was held at Kochi on 9 October.

The first video song "Premamennal" was released online on 14 October by Sony Music India. It was sung by Prithviraj Sukumaran, Indrajith Sukumaran, Jayasurya and Kalabhavan Shajon. The song "Yenno Njanente" featuring Baby Meenakshi, sung by Sreya Jayadeep was released on 22 October. The romantic song "Manjaadum" which has Malayalam, Hindi and Tamil lyrics incorporated was shot in Ramoji Film City, Hyderabad. The IBTimes called it a "clear visual treat".

Awards

The film won the following awards: