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Gandhinagar 2nd Street

1986 137’ col Malayalam d/s Sathyan Andhikkad pc Casino Prod. lyr Bichu Thirumala c Bipin Mohan m Shyam lp Mohanlal, Srinivasan, Seema, Mammootty, Karthika, Thilakan

Mohanlal comedy and one of Andhikkad’s biggest hits. The simpleton Sethu (Mohanlal) finds employment as a security guard, hired by a street neighbourhood. The first part of the film is a straightforward sit-com as his friend Madhavan (Srinivasan) masquerades as a thief to raise Sethu’s stock with his employers; the plan misfires and Madhavan gets a sound thrashing. Things take a more serious turn as Sethu’s former girlfriend Maya (Karthika) moves into one of the houses on the street with her police chief father (Thilakan). The lovers had parted when Sethu tried to seduce Maya, following misguided advice that the best way to get her father to agree to their marriage was to get her pregnant first. Sethu makes an enemy of the entire neighbourhood when he uses violence to rescue Maya from the unwanted attentions of one of the street denizens. He is protected by the schoolteacher Nirmala (Seema), leading to allegations of an illicit sexual relationship between them. However, her husband (Mammootty) arrives from the Gulf, and sorts everything out. The plot somewhat gratuitously reveals Maya at the end to be a widow, whose husband died a week after their wedding. It does so mainly to allow the film to end on a tragic note, as Sethu too leaves for the Gulf unable to make concrete promises to his reconciled girl. The film is dominated by Mohanlal’s energetic performance and the comic dialogue (interspersing Hindi with Malayalam). Sequels with the same characters were Nadodikattu (1987) and Pattana Praveshanam (1988), both by Andhikkad.

Film