Meleparambil Aanveedu

Plot

Harikrishan (Jayaram) is the youngest son of Thrivikraman Muthallali (Narendra Prasad). His brothers Jayakrishnan and Gopikrishan are not as handsome as him. He wants to earn a good living and so sets forth to a Tamil village as manager of a courier company. Hari sees a young Tamil woman named Pavizham who is being forced by her father to get married against her will. The two fall in love and elope.

Hari is afraid of whether or not his parents would agree to their marriage, so he keeps Pavizham undercover as a maid in his home. When Hari goes away on business, his parents realize that Pavizham is pregnant and decide to dismiss her from her job. When Hari returns home, he is forced to reveal that Pavizham is his wife. Hari's mother, who likes Pavizham, scolds Hari for keeping his wife as a servant — she and her husband express their willingness to accept Pavizham as their daughter-in-law.

Cast

Other crew

Development

After the success of Jayaram - Rajasenan team's Ayalathe Adyeham, they planned to do another family entertainer. At this time, lyricist Gireesh Puthenchery told an interesting story to Jayaram about four bachelors with the youngest the one only educated, in a Corleone-like family. Jayaram, who was highly inspired by this probably untold story, decided to produce it himself. The thread was developed by Gireesh and introduced to Rajasenan. It was first developed into a novel and then to a complete film script. Jayaram suggested Goodknight Mohan distribute it. However, Mohan set an unusual demand to Rajasenan, to include some experienced directors to supervise him on script. This was unacceptable to Rajasenan and the project was shelved.

At this time, Rajasenan was replaced from the crew of a political film, Janam, produced by Mani. C. Kappan. Kappan assured Rajasenan to produce a film for him, obviously as a compensation for his move. The shelved story of Meleparambil Aanveedu was returned by Mohan, for the reasonable amount of ₹20,000. Calicut-based film writer Raghunath Paleri was selected to write the screenplay.

Casting

The originally decided cast included obviously Jayaram, along with Shobhana, Meena, Jagathy Sreekumar, Oduvil Unnikrishnan etc. Vijayaraghavan was later signed in to do the mostly serious character in the film. Narendra Prasad, who was typecast for villain roles, was later selected. Innocent was originally cast for the role done by Janardhanan. He rejected the role as he was busy with another film, Sakshal Sreeman Chathunni. Janardhanan, widely known for his villain roles was thus selected to do that comedy role. The others in the cast are Vinu Chakravarthy, Priyanka etc.

Filming

The film was initially set in Salem in the script and was to be shot there, too. However, a practical change was made to replace Salem with Pollachi, both in the script as well as the filming location.

Reception

The film is considered a magnum opus romantic comedy in Malayalam film history. Not only does it have an unusual plot but also the performances of the lead as well as supporting actors made the film a classic. The film was a break in the career of Jayaram as well as Rajasenan. It marked the transition of thespian Janardhanan to comedy roles and typecasted Narendra Prasad to character roles. Critically, it is regarded as a trendsetter and one of the best films in the nineties.

It was a big hit at the box office. The movie, made at a cost of ₹40 lakhs, collected ₹2 crores (unadjusted for inflation) from Kerala alone. The comparatively huge collection it made from Tamil Nadu adds to that. Its rights were sold for a then-record amount: ₹ 25 lakhs.

Box office

The film was a commercial success and ran more than 200 days.

Soundtrack

The soundtrack for the film is composed by Johnson Master and lyrics penned by Girish Puthenchery, I.S. Kundoor and Kavinjar Kaalidasan. It proved popular upon release.

Remake

In August 2012 the producer of Meleparambil Aanveedu, Mani C. Kappan announced to remake the film in Assamese language in a press conference held in Guwahati. Kappan himself produced and directed the film, titled Borolar Ghor, under the banner of Okay Productions. The film was released on 2 November 2012 starring Utpal Das and Debasmita Benarjee in the lead roles.

This film was remade in Tamil, albeit unofficially, as Naiyaandi in 2013.