‘Minnal Murali’ movie review: Like a feel-good bolt from the sky

Despite banking on familiar superhero tropes, Basil Joseph and Tovino Thomas ensure that their film has a character of its own

Jaison alias ‘Minnal’ Murali has American dreams just like many other youngsters of his age in the early 1990s, but he hardly ever steps out of his native Kurukkanmoola village. It is almost a self-contained world and despite his dreams of making it big abroad, his concerns are mostly related to the land that he belongs to. Unlike the American superheroes, who have on their shoulders the burden to save the entire country or even the planet, ‘Minnal’ Murali’s responsibilities are much smaller, but no less important.

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In one of the early scenes, Jaison’s (Tovino Thomas) nephew Josemon (Vasisht Umesh) gives a crash course on superheroes to his uncle, who is unaware of them. “It seems America survives because of them,” Josemon says, in a jibe at some of the oft-repeated superhero storylines that also reveals the line of thinking from the makers here. Yet, director Basil Joseph is not averse to drawing inspiration from some of these usual superhero film tropes, even as he firmly places ‘Minnal’ Murali in the local context. The leap of ambition that Basil takes in his third film is certainly much more than that was required of him in his first two projects.