Keshu ee Veedinte Nadhan review: 'Jest' a family drama by Dileep and Nadirshah

Keshu ee Veedinte Nadhan is a humorous family drama, not a slapstick comedy as one might expect when good old friends Dileep and Nadirshah join hands for a film for the first time. With an intriguing plot and interesting characters, the film keeps you engaged despite hiccups here and there in the narrative.

The film had a high amount of curiosity quotient with Dileep’s unusual appearance as an elderly driving trainer. The film revolves around how a stroke of fortune, rather paradoxically, makes Keshu’s peaceful life troublesome. It is the shaping of the lead character as a weird yet good-hearted man that makes the film somewhat distinct in the long-tradition of family dramas in Malayalam cinema.

Keshu, a miserly man past his middle age, lives an ordinary life with the earnings from his driving school. He is a typical protagonist of a family drama in the sense that he is troubled by his relatives – sisters and brothers-in-law – for their undue share of family property. All these are established through some stock sequences of mild fun. The film picks up pace with a trip to Rameshwaram by all the family members to submerge the ashes of Keshu’s father in the holy waters of the temple town.

In between, Keshu gets a call which gives him a ‘shocking’ message. Now, he has to abandon the trip midway and reach home immediately without letting others know. Keshu’s attempts to break away from the group and what awaits him back home makes the rest of the film.

The film is not as hilarious as some of the big hits of Dileep in his prime days. However, it is chucklesome throughout. It starts and ends well but loses its grip somewhere in between when its attempt to render some hilarity doesn’t fall in place. Nadirshah’s attempts to shed the hangover of his famed stage skit days and focus on the film as a wholesome narrative is evident in the movie and that’s welcome.

Sajeev Pazhoor, who wrote the critically-acclaimed Thondimuthalum Driksakshiyum, has penned Keshu’s script. He deserves credit for crafting the character and knitting a fine storyline. What doesn’t impress is the habitual melodrama and stock characters.

Dileep plays Keshu with confidence. The character's body language and mannerisms are maintained throughout despite his evident tendency to overdo at some points. Urvashi does yet another easy and impressive performance as Keshu’s wife Rathnamma. Jaffer Idukki, Kottayam Nazeer and Kalabhavan Shajohn make the crooked brother-in-law trio. Among them, Jaffer steals the show with his highly convincing portrayal of Vijayan Pillai, the eldest paan-eating brother-in-law. Among the younger lot, Naslen and Vaishnavi totally justify their casting as the children of Keshu.