Vellaripravinte Changathi is based on the story of film-maker Augustine Joseph who made a Malayalam film in 1966. However, due to some reasons, the film did not make it to the theatres. The 1960s-70s was a period dominated by Prem Nazir, Sathyan, Sheela and others. Unluckily Augustine Joseph was not able to get the film released. Later he commits suicide due to the debts from the production of the film. After years his son revels the original prints of the film from Gemini Lab and sees it. Later he goes on with releasing the film and tries to find the people who did the characters. The film is well appreciated for the way of narration and picturisation which makes the viewer feels that they are actually watching an old Black and white movie of the 60-70s
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Director Akku Akbar's Vellaripravinte Changathi is about a cinema-within-cinema. There are visuals of an old film, which was shot in the 1970's and then, the story investigates what happened to the characters later on. You have to admire the honesty with which the film has been made, but still one can't help feeling that this one could have been much better! Manikkunju (Indrajith) gets a job in the famous Gemini film lab and soon after, he finds a film can where the reels of an unfinished 1970's film titled Vellaripravinte Changathi that never got released, at some corner of the store room. The film had two newcomers in the lead- Shajahan, who played Ravi (Dileep) and Mary Varghese, who played Sulekha (Kavya).Now we watch the whole film along with Manikkunju and a few others, inside a preview theater. The film, which is said to have a path breaking story, turns out to be a rather boring romance between a Hindu boy and his neighbor, a Muslim girl.It is soon told that the lead pair was having a torrid romance, during the shooting of the film. Once the preview is over, the attention shifts to the question of what happened to the love birds after the shooting. And things end up in a rather disappointingly melodramatic way.The obvious question here is; which one is the actual romance in the film? Is it the reel life affair between Ravi and Sulekha or the real life one between Shajahan and Mary Varghese? In all fairness, director Akku Akbar and scenarist G S Anil have tried to have a different pattern, but it is just that they failed to package it in a spectacular way. The cinematographers, Vipin Mohan and Sameer Haq, have done a good job. Music director Mohan Sithara's tunes are superb and the music takes the viewer to those years, in a highly effective way.If you are ready to forget his mimicry of Prem Nazir's style during one of the scenes and his odd make up during the final sequences, Dileep has done a decent job. As always, Kavya looks the same in all the phases and here it is all too evident when she acts in her trademark style even in the 70's as well. The rest of the cast including Manoj K Jayan, Indrajith, Sai Kumar, Vijayaraghavan, Ramu and Mamukoya have done their parts pretty well.It is evident that some real hard work has gone into the making of Vellaripravinte Changathi , which should be appreciated. But still, the film ends up as a half baked one, at best